


The Vanishing of Will Purcell

by fullborn



Category: True Detective
Genre: Alternate Universe - Stranger Things Fusion, F/M, Gen, M/M, Missing Persons, Period-Typical Homophobia / Racism, Supernatural Elements, a kid called Will goes missing...bikes...the similarities are uncanny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2020-06-29 19:46:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 53,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19837282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullborn/pseuds/fullborn
Summary: Wayne and Roland investigate Will Purcell's disappearance. Everything's routine until Tom starts talking to the lights, Amelia swears there's a local conspiracy and there just might be a monster terrorising West Finger.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Full kudos to [moonbobjohnson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbobjohnson/pseuds/moonbobjohnson) for pointing out the parallels between both the story and character dynamic of Stranger Things and True Detective S3 and consequently...this. 
> 
> Sorry for rehashing the first episodes of both shows but it had to be done! We're going to properly diverge from canon later on.

** November 7th, 1980. Washington County, Arkansas.  **

***

Steve McQueen died, and the day went from bad to shit. 

Roland catches himself drifting and jerks awake just in time to see the part in the movie where McQueen does the full eight seconds on the big black bull leaping like it’s got the devil himself on its back and the crowd goes wild. ‘Good form,’ murmurs Roland in his beer, even though he doubts McQueen rode any actual bulls back in the day. 

He rarely takes time off but he reckons he’s earned this, figures it not a bad plan taking a half-day to come home and work his way through a six-pack of beer along with his favourite King of Cool movies. Shit, he’s not sentimental but he might as well mark the day with a few drinks. 

That’s when the phone rings. Roland mutes the television and pads over to the wall in his bare feet, picking up on the third ring with a grunt.

‘Roland -’ comes the voice of his partner Wayne Hays down the line, and Roland groans.

‘Purple. You wanna hear me read a bedtime story, cause I don’t see any other reason you callin’ this late when I’m off the clock.’

‘Shut up man, I need you to come in. Missing persons assist out’n West Finger, kid never come home for dinner.’

‘You ask Lewinsky? Fuckin’ Sanderson?’ 

‘Sanderson went home sick after pukin’ bologna up all over the bathroom floor, and Lewinsky hates my fuckin’ guts. Wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need you, _partner._ ’ 

‘Ah, shit,’ grunts Roland. ‘What else would I be doin’ on a Friday night ‘cept carrying your ass?’

‘Drinks on me for a week, man, just haul ass to the station pronto. Think of the overtime.’ 

‘Lewinsky can suck my dick, tell him for me would you?’

_‘Fuck you,’_ says Wayne and hangs up. Roland chuckles, and it’s the last time he finds something to laugh about for some time.

***

Wayne takes one look at him as he comes trudging into the station and hands him a crumpled packet of gum. ‘Christ’s sake, try to look like you’ve been drinkin’ anything other than motor-fuel since five,’ he says.

‘It’s the weekend and you called me, asshole,’ grumbles Roland, still damp from the rain outside and not in the mood. Pops a piece of gum into his mouth and chows down. ‘Now, what’s all this about?’

Wayne flips open his notebook in one long fingered hand and reads out, matter of fact: ‘William Purcell, only child of Lucy and Tom Purcell of 5009 Shoepick Lane, went out biking around 4.00pm and never made it home. Presumed missing. Father called it in - we got him in the next room. Looks about as shit as you do.’

‘Thoughts?’ 

‘Mother’s still MIA, got some officers out lookin’ for her at local drinkin’ spots. Purcell says he ain’t seen her since this morning so could be she’s taken off with the kid, left his ass.’

‘Well, here’s hopin’.’

The mellow booze-buzz is fading as Roland and Wayne head into the police chief’s office; the chief himself Skip Rosenbaum gives them a withering look that clearly asks _What took you fucknuts so long?_ even while he says, mildly, ‘Mr Purcell, this here’s Detective Hays n’ Detective West, State Police - here to take lead in this investigation.’

The man sitting with his back to them turns: the father, pale and red-eyed and looking two seconds away from gnawing his fingernails clean off. Something unkempt and underfed about him: the loose hanging shirt, oil-stained hands, dark hair and moustache gone too long since having seen a pair of scissors. Hangdog but on edge. 

‘I’ve been waitin’ two fuckin’ hours,’ Purcell says, eyes cutting from Wayne to Roland and back to Wayne, a frown building in his face. ‘Won’t even let me go out lookin’, while what, y’all sit round tryin’ to find your own dicks?’ 

‘Sir, we understand your frustration,’ says Wayne, smooth as butter but blunt as the accompanying knife. ‘But the information you’ve been givin’ the Chief here helps us get started, gives us a grasp of the field. You’re bein’ very helpful.’ 

‘Sure, askin’ about my wife and all that other shit’s real useful. Let me see, Will gets a rash if he goes near cats. He’ll eat broccoli but not beans, never gotten a grade lower than a B in his life, thinks Frank Zappa’s hot shit and oh yeah - he’s fuckin’ missing!’

‘Please, Mr Purcell. If you wouldn’t mind runnin’ us through it again one more time,’ says Roland, taking the chair beside him, nice and calm. 

Purcell scowls, scatters ash all over the carpet as he fiddles with his cigarette (despite Rosenbaum’s pointed tragic stare at the ashtray on his desk) and says flatly, ‘I told you already, Will went out on his bike ‘round 4.00 to see Ronnie Boyle’s new dog, should’ve been home by sundown but he never came. I went lookin’, called at Ronnie’s, couldn’t find him anyplace so I came here to report it. Thought y’all might do your jobs.’ 

Roland writes down a few things, looks back up at Purcell. ‘He allergic to dogs too?’

‘What?’

‘You said Will was off to see this kid Ronnie Boyle’s dog. He gets rashes around cats, might well do the same for dogs.’

‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Just he might not have been goin’ to see the dog is all, if he was allergic.’

Tom Purcell makes a noise like he’s choking on his own spit. 

Wayne steps in, shooting a glare Roland’s way that just might be aimed at sobering him up, and says, ‘Mr Purcell, we got a canine team on the way along with all the officers we can spare.’ He tucks his notebook into his pocket, straightens his tie. ‘If it’s alright with you I’d like if we all head back to your house, go through some things. Be there case he comes back.’ 

‘Long as you’re doin’ something,’ says Purcell, flinging his hands up as he stands up — just as the door opens to admit a uniformed policeman and a blonde woman. Roland figures this must be Lucy Purcell, a sharp-edged woman with something like half a wolverine pelt for a coat and teeth bared to match.

‘What the fuck did you do?’ she cries, making straight for her husband brandishing her handbag with intent. ‘Huh? What the fuck did you do, you piece of shit?’

‘What did _I_ do? Jesus Christ!’ says Tom, bristling like a cornered alleycat. ‘What’ve you been doin’ besides lookin’ for dick? Cause it sure don’t involve takin’ care of your own son.’ 

‘Oh yeah, that’s rich comin’ from you.’ She laughs, bitter. ‘You were meant to be watchin’ him!’ 

‘Fuck you,’ Tom spits, rote and familiar. Something red and angry blooming like a bruise.

She hits him in the face. 

‘Whoa now,’ Roland says, on his feet and in between them now to stop them from tearing out each others’ throats. ‘Ma’am, take a step back. You been drinkin’ tonight?’ He can feel Tom’s chest trembling under his splayed fingers, Roland’s hand the only thing preventing the man from leaping at his wife.

‘You think he hasn’t?’

Wayne clears his throat and steps forward, the straight man role in the ludicrous marital drama being played out over Skip Rosenbaum’s desk. Skip looks ready to bust a vein. ‘Mrs. Purcell. Now ain’t the time or the place for this, we got to think of Will. Work together. We were just about to head back to yours. Take a look around.’

Lucy takes a few shallow breaths through her nose, doing the usual dance between listening to what Wayne’s saying and spitting in his face. Roland with his free hand on his cuffs, just in case. 

‘Yeah,’ she finally says. ‘Yeah. Let’s go home, introduce y’all to the neighbours. Why the hell not?’

Roland shuts the door firmly behind them to mask Skip’s loud sigh of relief.

‘Hey, sir,’ he says, catching Tom Purcell by the elbow as they hit a new corridor and Wayne starts to head right. Purcell following like clockwork with a glazed expression, barely noticing the trail of blood dripping from his nose to the cracked lino below but he jerks to a halt at Roland’s touch. ‘Think we oughta take a trip to the bathroom, get you cleaned up. You okay bringin’ the car round front?’

This said to Wayne, who doesn’t look half-happy to be left with Lucy — or at least she doesn’t look half-happy to be left with him — but he nods and continues to the parking garage with the white woman in tow. 

The bathroom’s like any public building bathroom. Stalls, stained urinal, fluorescent lights that bring out the dark bags under Purcell’s eyes and the sheen of blood on his moustache and teeth. Roland stations him in front of the sink, grabs a wad of toilet paper from the nearest cubicle. He comes back to find Purcell splashing water on his face from the tap, pink running into the sink and over his thin hands. 

Their eyes catch in the mirror. Only the briefest of moments but there’s something exposed about they way Purcell instantly drops his gaze downward; like the night has left him raw, eroded, revealing the crackling live wires just about holding him upright. 

‘You okay?’ Roland says, holding out the tissue. 

Purcell tries an attempt at a laugh; it comes out more as a choked grunt gone sour. 'No, Detective,’ he says, turning around to fix Roland with a dead-eyed glare. ‘You’ll find I ain’t close to bein’ _okay._ Not til you find my fuckin’ son anyways, before —’ 

It would be just Roland’s luck if the victim’s father were to pass out and crack his head off a sink before they can finish questioning him, but Purcell doesn’t drop — just sways and blinks under the harsh light. Halted by the awful possibility of his own unsaid words.

‘You’re alright,’ grunts Roland, and carefully reaches up to swipe a new ooze of blood working its way from Purcell’s nose. Takes one of the man’s hands and makes sure he’s holding the tissue in place. ‘Tilt your head back, get that bleedin’ stopped. You got that?’ 

When Purcell looks at Roland he seems uncertain. A frown creeping into his expression like he’s only now seeing Roland for the first time. ‘…Yeah.’ 

‘Good to go then. Come on.’

Roland holds the door open and they head to the car, the clack of his boots loud and eerie throughout the empty corridors. Dreamlike. Purcell half a step behind at Roland’s heels. The town car running out front ready for them.

‘We good?’ asks Wayne as Roland gets in shotgun and Tom fumbles with his seatbelt. Lucy ignores them both. 

They’re reaching that stage in the night where everything starts to feel unreal. Roland fights the heavy pull of sleep, focuses instead on the reams of darkness rolling past along with the odd traffic light or lonely house as the road takes them towards West Finger. The huge orange moon above. The shifting patterns on Wayne’s hand anchored to the steering wheel. 

Behind them Tom and Lucy sit in stony silence. Roland can just about see a pale corner of Lucy’s face angled away in the rearview mirror, imagines Tom looking out the other window in exactly the same way. It reminds Roland of being in the backseat as a kid after some squabble with his brother, two of them holding bloody noses and ignoring each other as if that might undo the damage done.

He swallows down a sudden absurd urge to laugh.

His eyes drift back to the road just in time to see a white flash as something darts in front of the car headlights. _‘Shitfuck!’_ Wayne says and slams his foot down on the brakes, hard. A deer, Roland thinks as he tries to keep up with the harsh motion of the car and the smell of burnt rubber clogs the air — they’re skidding: wet tarmac, the squeal of tyres — and then they finally come to a stop parked across both lanes. 

‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ,’ says Lucy from the backseat.

‘The hell was that?’ Wayne grunts, unclamping his death-grip on the wheel to stagger out of the car. 

Roland twists around. ‘Everyone okay?’

Lucy looks like she might be sick, fortunately unlit cigarette dropped to the floor; Tom’s bleeding but that’s nothing new. Both their eyes are blown wide and alert — Roland sees Lucy has her free hand clutched tight onto Tom’s arm, who looks more surprised by this turn of events than nearly ending up dead in a car-wreck. Lucy lets out an embarrassed cough and slides her hand free from her husband’s arm. Caught in a moment of weakness. 

No one’s screaming and there’s no fresh blood so Roland gets out of the car and heads after Wayne. Legs shaking somewhat but he knows that will pass, just adrenaline from the near miss. 

‘Seriously, what the hell was that?’ Wayne peers into the gloom. There’s something moving outside the pool of the headlights, thrashing and giving off a weird high keening that doesn’t sound like any animal should.

‘Bambi with a death wish,’ Roland says. ‘Thought we didn’t hit it?’ 

‘Sounds fuckin’ hit.’ 

The Purcells are out of the car too, watching them move toward the injured creature; Roland wants to warn them to stay back but it seems overkill. The thing in the grass is weak. Dying. Purcell pulls a lighter from his pocket and tosses it underarm to Roland. 

‘Thanks.’ 

He’s got his own, somewhere, but it feels like a peace-sign of sorts and he’ll take all the light he can get approaching the hit and cornered creature. The flame stutters in his hand and illuminates a faint path in the darkness as he and Wayne advance slowly. Blood first. Then the source: it’s a deer all right, a female, pale underbelly and white rolling eyes looking up at them with blind fear.

‘Jesus,’ breathes Roland. ‘You try tellin’ me a car did that?’

There’s a ridiculous amount of blood. Great gouts leaking from the poor thing’s savaged neck, chest and flank; there’s fucking sinew and bone sliding in and out of view with each new wave as the deer labours to breathe. Pelt ripped to shreds. It lets out a high gurgling wail and more blood bubbles up from its mouth. 

Wayne already has his service weapon out, safety off and aiming steadily at the deer’s head. Roland wants to say _wait_ , wants to pull at Wayne’s arm and upset his aim like Wayne did to Roland with the fox earlier that week but this is nothing like that. The creature is in pain.

In the junkyard, half the fun had been ragging each other out when they inevitably missed a shot and let a rat scurry away to continue its clueless rat life — but here there’s no chance at a miss. No fun at all. It finally dawns on him what Wayne meant about only taking a shot at something that had a chance to fight back. 

‘Rest easy,’ Wayne murmurs to himself, calm and unblinking. Pulls the trigger. Roland flinches despite himself as the deer jerks and falls limp. 

‘Well, shit,’ grunts Tom Purcell. He slaps his hand on the bonnet and turns to get back in the car. ‘Metal ain’t even dinted.’

Wayne slips his gun back into its holster and they both step back from the mangled body towards the car. Roland fiddling with the lighter in his hand.

‘You superstitious at all, Purple?’ 

‘What, you askin’ if I got the shine? Savin’ the magic black man act for when I retire.’

Roland snaps the lighter open, snaps it close just as fast. ‘You’re relentlessly perverse, you know that?’ he says. ‘I ask a fuckin’ question and you go all _Brown v. Board_ on me.’

‘That’s the parallel you choose? Shit.’

‘Factorin’ in your deliberate obtusity maybe what I ought’ve said was: “Gee partner, I found that omen a mite unsettlin’. How about you?”’

Wayne raises his eyebrows, shooting him a look Roland doesn’t care for. ‘Bear late for the season is all,’ he says, like Roland’s a kid. ‘Don’t mean nothing.’

‘You ever seen a bear these parts with that kind of tooth n’ claw capability? We’re talkin’ _kodiak._ ’ 

Roland loses his point somewhat as he nearly slips on the wet ground. There’s something slick and sticky coating one of his boots, clear like saliva but twice as thick and stringing out like melted taffy. Not blood for sure. He wipes it on the grass before Wayne can notice his strayed attention, mentally files it away under: _Weird Shit, To Be Dealt With At A Later Date._

‘Don’t get all spooked on me now, man,’ says Wayne. ‘Night ain’t even begun and you’re lookin’ to check out.’

‘Only thing I’m checkin’ is my damn watch. Just drive, would you?’

*** 

The night only gets longer after they get set up shop at the Purcell place, a long list of questions and orders starting to tangle together as night draws into morning and the troopers and dog-teams comb the surrounding area to no avail. Cups upon cups of coffee gone cold in the percolator. Roland makes a sour face and lowers his fourth cup, imagines Lucy Purcell’s look of disgust if he were to ask for sugar and swiftly decides he’s best without. 

The boy’s room was a bust, nothing of interest save the old skin mags and a pile of papers written in something like code that the father assures them is to do with some type of game. Seems less sure on the skin mags. Apart from that the only possible lead is the mother’s cousin in Missouri — Wayne’s calling him now; pulling the poor bastard out of bed a small comfort as the over-tiredness kicks in. 

‘You got a bad connection?’ Roland asks.

Tom Purcell jerks upright from where he’s slumped over the kitchen table. ‘Huh?’

‘Light’s on the fritz. Might wanna get that checked.’ Sure enough, the light above Roland’s head is sputtering from bright to dark in staccato flashes. Faint but annoying enough to get on his already-frayed nerves. 

‘I’ll get right on it,’ says Tom and lowers his head back into his hands. 

Roland goes over and sits opposite, ducking under the telephone cable Wayne’s got stretched out from here to the privacy of Lucy’s bedroom. Tom lets out a sigh. Reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out a cigarette, clamps it between his lips and starts to pat himself down in a vain search for his lighter. 

‘Here, remember?’ says Roland. He leans in, cups his hands under Tom’s cigarette and ignites the battered zippo. The flame takes. Tom breathes in slowly as Roland lowers his hands and turns his head away to let out a shaky exhale. Swallows. Smoke drifting pale against the blue stubble of his throat. 

Roland lights up his own smoke. The lighter has a faint inscription: a date maybe. He drags his thumb over the writing before sliding the lighter across the table for Tom to tuck back into his jeans. ‘Wedding present from Lucy,’ mumbles Tom, perhaps guessing the silent question.

‘How long y’all been married?’ 

‘Well, Will’s twelve…add ‘bout six months to that.’ 

‘And another six for how long we knew each other before,’ grunts Lucy from the couch. Roland had thought her to be sleeping, curled up under her coat with her eyes closed like that. ‘Fuckin’ biggest mistake.’

Tom ducks his head and frowns at the scuffed table-edge. Working up a bitter reply, perhaps, but mercifully Wayne re-emerges with the phone and the moment sizzles out like a damp firecracker.

‘Day’s nearly breakin’,’ he says. ‘We best head out, man the search party.’ 

‘Y’all better stay here with Deputy Kehoe,’ Roland says to the Purcells, shrugging into his sheepskin jacket. ‘Get some sleep if you can. We got your number if there’s any change in the situation.’

Tom looks set to protest but Wayne steps in pre-emptively. ‘I understand you want to help, Mr Purcell, but it’s really best you stay here. Case Will comes back. Or there’s news. Understand?’

Purcell just about has the filter of his cigarette chewed to bits before he finally answers. 

‘Alright, _Detective_. Just - just find my boy, okay?’

Wayne touches him briefly on the shoulder, uncharacteristic enough for Roland to note it as ammo for later. ‘That’s our job, sir,’ he says. ‘Aimin’ to do just that.’

***

Their job also includes traipsing over miles of damp grassland with nothing more than a dry bagel for breakfast; Roland feels his stomach rumbling as he squints at more dead leaves and twigs. Volunteers in orange vests, dog teams, uniformed police. It’s not a bad turnout but hours stretch on with nothing more promising than a few candy wrappers and a baby shoe; the volunteers start to murmur to one another as they walk. 

And Wayne, well he’s been chatting up a damn schoolteacher for the past half-hour — who, as itturns out, teaches the boy’s English class when she’s not helping out local police investigations and distracting their best damn tracker. Pretty in a teacherly sort of way, he’ll give Wayne that, with a pleasant voice to boot. Diplomatic. Happy to talk about Will and his parents but careful with her words.

For a normally stone-faced guy, Wayne’s thoughts about Ms Reardon are painfully easy to read. He even cracks a smile, for Christ’s sake, in the middle of looking for a potentially dead kid, lighting up at her every word like a damn Christmas tree. Roland kicks a clod of earth and stalks towards the woods. 

There’s a thin, nice-looking woman walking in the same direction he is and hell, two can play at that game, so he slows up and says all professional-like: ‘You’re good to come out and help today, ma’am. We appreciate the support.’

‘Oh, of course!’ she says, tucking her dark hair behind her ear to offer him her hand. ‘I’m Lori. And it’s no trouble, really, one of the ladies from church heard and rang us all to come help 'fore it even made the news.’

‘Roland. Roland West,’ he says as they shake. ‘That’s good to hear, nothin’ like a bit of community spirit to get people together.’

‘Well, once we heard it was Tom we just had to help, you know? Folks that won’t help a brother in need haven’t got much place in the church if you ask me.’

‘Mmm,’ says Roland fervently, trying to make it look like he’s stepped foot in a place of worship more than once in the past ten years. ‘What was that about Mr Purcell?’

‘Oh, he comes to mass sometimes. Never hangs around much after. Not big on talking. I noticed him because more often than not he won’t go up to take communion - I just thought that was funny. Even folks that don’t believe still take it cause that’s what you do, you know? Otherwise people start to talk.’

‘Huh.’ 

They walk in silence a bit, branches snapping under their feet while Roland tries to wrap his head around the politics of small-town Catholic America: not that much different to small-town Baptist America, he reckons, just with more incense.

‘Hey,’ Lori says, pointing. ‘Is that something?’

Roland crouches down and stares at the spot. The gaping mouth of a storm drain open in the ground before them, too big for an adult to crawl down but maybe just right for a child — and there, snagged on the metal opening like a trail marker, is a piece of torn material. 

He leans in. It doesn’t suit the description of anything Will was wearing when he took off on his bike yesterday but it’s odd enough to give Roland pause: the pattern is familiar. A hospital gown.

‘Is it…a clue?’ asks Lori above him, face tight with nervous excitement.

‘Could be.’ He bags it just be safe, sticks one of the red markers to mark the spot and is just about to check in with Wayne when the radio at his hips crackles to life. 

_‘Hey, Roland. Come in, man, over.’_

‘I hear you, Purple. What’s your position? Over.’

_‘Get your ass over to the ranger tower - east Devil’s Den, asap. I got the kid’s bike.’_

Roland gets to his feet and tries to ignore the dread thrill that runs up his spine at Wayne’s words, lifts the radio for one last broadcast. ‘I’m on my way. Over n’ out.’

Lori gives him a wide-eyed look, but he tries to appear unhurried and unshaken as he tucks the radio and the piece of material into his coat pocket. He’s got to get over to the ranger tower pronto but some part of him, instinct maybe, is screaming at him to stay and look around more closely. He takes one last glance at the storm drain, at the chain link fence rising up behind it. 

‘You know what’s behind that?’ he asks. The area’s unmarked on the map.

Lori frowns. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘That’s the Hoyt Energy plant. I work there, as well as half the people in a twenty mile radius. It’s big.’ 

Roland’s heard of Hoyt Energy, sure: the name’s hard to avoid when the conversation turns to industry and self-made business in north-west Arkansas. _Hoyt._ It’s on his own damn electricity bill, the familiar blue bird logo and family name.

Shouldn’t make him strangely uneasy but he can’t help imagining the dark storm drain tunnel, Will Purcell crawling on his hands and knees to eventually emerge onto the property of God knows what kind of huge industrial plant, alone and lost among a maze of strange buildings and machines.

‘You know if they do tours?’ he asks, and Lori laughs because sure they do. Just not the kind of tour he’s hoping to take.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things have yet to get strange. We're getting there!

The only thing they know for sure is that everyone involved is lying.

It’s a real ball-buster. The teenagers at the ranger tower; the uncle on the phone; even the parents when it comes down to it — they’re all lying one way or another to hide their own failings. Just muddying the truth enough to make the whole affair a sea of bullshit. 

Roland crosses his arms and leans back against the interrogation room wall. Of course the most suspicious guy is the only one telling the truth: Brett Woodard has dirt under his fingernails, a soft clipped manner of speaking and a way of making the nice white folks in the area uncomfortable when he goes rooting through their trash, but the one thing he’s not is a liar.

‘Like I said, I saw the boy ride past about 4.15 or so, towards the sun,’ he’s telling them. ‘South west.’

‘That the last time you saw him or did you maybe follow him, go down to the ranger tower? You collect things; all kinda stuff to salvage round there,’ says Wayne. They have a rapport, a mutual understanding vet to vet. Roland watches. Darkly reflecting how the words _motor pool_ never get him the same kind of instant chumminess down at the VFW.

‘No sir. I don’t go there much, folks hangin’ round there lookin’ for different kinds of things. I don’t want any trouble. I went home, like I said.’

‘What’s that meant to mean?’ grunts Roland. ‘What kinda trouble?’

Wayne flips his notebook a few pages back. ‘Some folks mentioned it bein’ a kind of queer cruisin’ spot. That it?’ 

Woodard gives a slow shrug and Roland tries to ignore the sick feeling twisting his stomach. ‘Folk don’t like feelin’ they’re bein’ watched down there. Though…I did see something, couple of weeks back, maybe. In the woods.’ 

‘What’d you see?’ asks Wayne.

Woodard folds his large hands on the table and frowns, earnest. ‘I know what folks say ‘bout me, ‘bout folks that come back from overseas that ain’t able to…adapt. Like we ain’t right in the head. But I know for sure what I saw and I know I ain’t crazy, so. Take it or leave it.’

‘Ain’t nobody here said you’re crazy,’ Roland points out, coming to stand at Wayne’s shoulder. Woodard looks up at him, grey eyes searching for sarcasm and finding none. 

‘Was out past the tower, near the junkyard,’ he begins, hesitant. ‘Sundown. I was haulin’ metal and I heard this _noise_ in the woods. Couldn’t place it. Standing there for minutes waiting ‘fore I saw it — this thing, walkin’ on two legs like a man, except…’ He pauses and looks straight at Wayne, voice quavering. ‘It didn’t have a face.’ 

Wayne’s tone is flat, matter of fact. ‘You saw a creature in the woods. With no face.’

‘I know how it sounds!’ Woodard exclaims. ‘But I saw what I saw — that thing wasn’t human. No sir.’ He shakes his head and his long hair shakes with him. ‘All those days in the jungle I never turned tail and run so fast in my life.’

Roland catches Wayne’s eye and they share a silent thought: Woodard’s not lying, sure, but that doesn’t mean a word he’s saying is the truth. 

***

It’s been forty-six hours since the call first came in and the tension rides higher with every passing second.

‘So, between a tip-line full of scumbags and weirdoes, a whole gang of lyin’ shitheeled teenagers, and a Vietnam vet who’s well and truly certifiable we got nothin’ but a bike to show for our trouble. That about right, Purple?’ 

Wayne drags his hands down his face. They’re both tired and on-edge and Roland doesn’t feel like he should be driving right now but he is, fatigue and speed limit be damned: as the hours slip by so does the likelihood that Will Purcell will be found alive.

‘We got a bike bein’ dusted for prints, yeah,’ says Wayne. ‘And Woodard ain’t insane, I don’t get that feelin’ off him. Might’ve been a hunter he saw.’

‘Yeah, and maybe we oughta be interviewin’ the local wildlife too, see if Smokey the Bear’s got anything to say for himself.’

‘Fuck off, man, you’re just pissed we ain’t knockin’ down the doors of Hoyt Energy askin’ if they happen to’ve seen a kid loose around the place.’ 

Roland grunts, overtakes a twelve-wheeler in a spray of gravel and water. ‘Don’t got to tell me you’re leadin’ the investigation, man, I know that. I ain’t Lewinsky,’ he says, thinking of the shit Wayne takes from the man on a daily basis. ‘But I’m tellin’ you I think there’s something hinky ‘bout that place and we oughta check it out.’

The landscape rolls past grey and dead, field upon field of chaff and dilapidated barns. Wayne looks out the window and sighs. Tired. ‘How about this,’ he says. ‘We finish talkin’ to the neighbours tomorrow, you head out to Hoyt’s and I stay here to do some recon. Both do some solo work.’ 

Roland slaps his hands on the wheel and pumps the gas. ‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about!’ he says, just short of grabbing Wayne by the shoulders and planting one on him. ‘You let me do the paperwork this evening, Chief. Think maybe you got some solo work to do involvin’ Ms Reardon.’ 

‘Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,’ deadpans Wayne, but Roland sees him hiding a faint grin against the collar of his shirt. ‘You got one messed up mind, man, if a man and a woman can’t even get to talkin’ without bein’ subject to some kind of sick implication.’

‘Just tell me I’m wrong,’ says Roland, and although Wayne shakes his head some more he doesn’t say anything more on the matter. A victory. 

***

Roland finishes writing up the day’s work later than he hoped after an interminable time trying to type without falling asleep at his desk. He finally rips the finished report from the machine and hotfoots it out of the office, feeling bludgeoned with tiredness and in serious need of his own bed. He pulls into Walmart on his way home, stumbles across the cold lot and into the store in search of sleeping pills. 

There’s too many brands so he grabs a selection, throws in some painkillers for good measure and is just about to head to the the check-out when he hears a familiar voice. Roland peers into the next aisle and there’s Tom Purcell, disheveled and unshaven and looking ready to throw down with the hapless employee before him.

‘Hey,’ says Roland, startling the two men out of their heated conversation. ‘What’s goin’ on, Mr. Purcell?’

Tom does a double take. Runs a hand through his wild mop of hair and lets out a small laugh, saying, ‘You fuckin’ followin’ me now? Jesus.’

‘I’m just here, man.’ Roland holds up his purchases. ‘Nothin’ more than that.’ 

The shop assistant holds out a box to Tom, straining to remain polite. ‘I’m tellin’ you, sir, this is the cheapest model we got,’ he says. ‘If there’s anything else I can help you with…?’

Tom chews on his lower lip, moustache twitching as he works his way into starting a full-blown yelling match — and Roland steps in before things get ugly. ‘I got it,’ he says, hand out. Tom and the assistant frowning as he plucks the box from the man’s hand and heads for the tills. 

‘Hey. Hey!’ Tom comes jogging up behind him, looking worse under the bright shop lights than in his own home. Flannel shirt buttoned up the wrong way and smelling thickly of booze. ‘You don’t gotta do that.’

‘Something happen to your phone?’ asks Roland, looking down at the AT&T wall-mounted set in his hands and stifling a yawn.

‘You hear me? I don’t want your fuckin’ pity, Detective. I can pay.’ 

‘Hell, I spend over thirty dollars I get half-price on any Aqua Net product my next visit, that’s a steal.’ Tom looks at him funny like he’s not sure whether Roland’s making fun of him; Roland takes the opportunity to dump their items in front of the teenage girl manning the till, ignoring his belated protests. ‘Just these, Miss - oh, and a pack of Marlboros. So, what happened?’ 

Tom folds his arms across his chest and watches the girl pull the cigarettes down from the rack. ‘We got a call,’ he says, and something in his voice cracks. ‘It, uh, it was just breathin’. Like someone was there but not sayin’ anything. I — I think it was Will.’ He wipes his nose on his sleeve and swallows. ‘Whole handset blew out durin’, fuckin’ electrical surge or something.’ 

Roland pays the girl and leads the way out of the store. ‘When did this happen? Should’ve called us.’

‘Kinda hard to call when you ain’t got a phone, Detective.’

‘Yeah. Sure,’ says Roland, blinking. Tiredness turning him real stupid real fast. ‘That’s right.’

They’re at his car now, orange light coating the slick tarmac like the glow of the moon the night before. Roland balances the shopping bag on the roof as he unlocks the door, decides he can hold off sleep a little while longer as he asks, ‘It alright I come back to yours, have a look around? Ought to get this phone up and runnin’ soon as we can.’

Tom looks at him a long while. ‘If you want.’

Roland follows the red of Tom’s taillights the whole way to Shoepick Lane. Dry swallows a few painkillers before getting out of the car and joining Tom in the driveway. The house itself has slipped further into chaos since Roland and Wayne left this morning: more overflowing ashtrays littering the tables along with loose cans of beer, couch cushions spilling onto the floor. And there’s the phone, blackened and hanging free from its cradle like a lynched thing. 

Roland lifts it up and peers at the charred earpiece. ‘You weren’t kiddin’. That’s toast.’

Tom’s fiddling with the new phone, intent as he lines all the parts out and starts to unscrew the old handset from the wall. ‘Flat-head,’ he grunts, hand out, and Roland passes him the tool from the box. Watches him work a while. Notices the way his hands remain firm and focused despite the slight alcohol-tremor shaking his fingers, the way he insists on clamping spare screws in between his teeth instead of putting them in his pocket or on the floor.

Roland crosses to the couch. ‘You really think it was Will? If you had to be certain.’

‘Be fuckin’ certain of my own child’s breathin’, if that’s what you mean,’ says Tom, not looking up from where he’s hunched over the wiring. ‘Ain’t just you; Lucy thinks I’ve cracked too. But she didn’t hear it.’ 

‘Never said you were cracked. Just makin’ sure is all.’ 

A yawn drags itself up from Roland’s chest and he closes his eyes, he’d swear for no more than a second or two but then he’s suddenly aware that the darkness outside has shifted to a different kind of darkness and that there’s a blanket over his lap that he knows he didn’t put there. Tom’s sitting in the armchair, head tilted back to the ceiling. Awake, judging from the glowing cigarette tip. 

‘How long was I out?’ rasps Roland. Mouth gone dry.

Tom makes a flat noise. ‘Half hour, maybe.’

The new phone catches the light all shiny and plastic on the wall. Set up and waiting for a repeat performance of the call without any assistance from Roland, not that he’s fixed anything electrical in his apartment for months — not when the tanned super with the gap in his teeth is so damn helpful and strangely compelling in overalls. 

‘Ain’t very professional of me,’ says Roland, straightening his collar and mussed hair as he sits up. ‘Sorry.’ 

‘I haven’t been able to. Sleep, I mean,’ murmurs Tom. A confessional sort of feeling, being in the dark. ‘Keep thinkin’ about Will. Can’t help it. ’ 

He sounds so wretched and choked Roland finds himself saying, ’Got pills in the car you want them,’ even though he knows from experience it’s a quick fix at most and won’t help the pain wracking the man’s voice. 

Tom shakes his head. 

‘I gotta know, man. If you’re gonna find him. You got to tell me if you ain’t, otherwise I’m goin’ to lose my fuckin’ mind sittin’ here waitin’ for y’all to drag in a body or…something.’

‘Hey,’ Roland says, leaning forward and putting a comforting hand just shy of Tom’s knee. ‘Hey. Cops are good at findin’. Okay?’

Maybe he’s still half-asleep; otherwise he must imagine the odd look that crosses Tom’s face as he glances down at Roland’s arm. Replaced in a moment by something more closed-off and unreadable; channel flicking over to static. 

‘You… you should go,’ Tom says, lurching to his feet. ‘Lucy might be back soon, who the fuck knows.’ 

‘It’s your house. Sure.’ 

Roland batters down the urge to promise Tom that he’s going to find his son: it’s rule 101 in dealing with victims and the bereaved — never make promises you can’t keep, and as a general rule of thumb try not to invite yourself in and fall asleep in the person’s home. Shit. He decides not to tell Wayne a word of this encounter lest the man hold it over Roland’s head for the rest of his natural life.

‘You call if anything else happens, Mr Purcell,’ Roland says at the door, ‘Try to get some sleep if you can.’ 

Tom grunts a farewell, leaves Roland on the doorstep feeling like he fucked up somehow. That maybe he should have promised.

He sits in his car for minutes. Watching the blank windows of the house, imagining Tom sitting alone in the dark with nothing but his worst thoughts and a silent phone for company. For some reason thinking of the deer. Choking on its own blood.

So Roland cranks back the seat and turns up the sherpa lining of his jacket collar, pops a handful of sleeping pills as if they might burn his throat like whiskey on the way down. Falls asleep outside the Purcell house as the moon emerges flat and sightless from behind the invisible clouds.

***

There’s a crick in his neck and his wrist is starting to cramp from taking notes all morning: just one of the hazards of the job alongside spending the night in a cold and uncomfortable car instead of sleeping in his own bed. It’s bad when Wayne looks like Mr. Personality in comparison —he is at least clean-shaven, more tolerant of the obscene amounts of tea they’ve had to drink out of politeness since daybreak, purportedly awake.

Roland rotates his hand, tries to swallow his fatigue as he turns to Neighbour #14. A kid. Michael Ardoin. Ten years old, lives on the next street over, went Trick-or-Treating with Will and some other kids on Halloween the week before. Blond, shy, withholding in the presence of strange adults. 

‘So Mike,’ he says, trying for a steady _trust-me_ kind of tone. ‘You go ridin’ your bike much? Was just sayin’ to my partner the other day - you barely see a kid on foot around here, s’like they’ve all grown wheels.’ 

‘Yessir,’ says Mike, then blushes. ‘I mean, I’ve got a bike.’ 

‘Ever go ridin’ around Devil’s Den? Kids hang out there, maybe got a spot y’all meet up and play?’

‘No sir. My dad doesn’t like if I go out there.’ 

‘You talk much to Will?’ chimes in Wayne from the corner. ‘Could see you boys bein’ friends, you know he liked Star Wars too?’ He gestures to the poster on the wall of Mike’s room, allows a grin. ‘Man, I saw that movie five times in the cinema, four for the last one.’

‘Really?’ Mike’s face brightens at the idea. Roland would think it a pretty good play if he didn’t already know the embarrassing truth: Wayne isn’t lying one tiny bit, the fucking nerd. 

‘Yeah. _Luke, I am your father._ ’ Wayne doing his best deep-voiced asthmatic impersonation. Mike giggles. ‘Tell you, I did not see that one coming.’

Roland leans back and lets Wayne do his thing, which involves spouting a lot of nonsense words that make the kid respond in kind. Seems like he’s got all the charm for kids and antisocial veterans these days, content to let Roland deal with the racist neighbours. 

‘…Lando,’ the kid murmurs, looks up at Wayne. Some reference going over Roland’s head. ‘Did you see that coming?’

‘Hey. You can trust us, Mike,’ says Wayne. ‘Only thing we want is to find Will safe and sound. You sure there ain’t anything you can think of that’d help us?’ 

It’s painfully clear when Mike Ardoin decides to lie, scrunching his nose and shaking his floppy-haired head. ‘No sir. I don’t think so.’

‘Well, here’s a number in case you remember something, okay? You call anytime, night or day, don’t even got to leave your name.’ 

Mike takes the card from Roland’s hand as if it might grow teeth and bite. ‘Okay.’

They shake hands with the kid’s parents, wave one last goodbye to Mike and exit the house. Wayne tucks his notebook back into his coat, instantly turns to Roland and says, ‘Man, that kid’s lyin’,’

‘You think?’ deadpans Roland. 

‘Stupid movie. Looks at me and thinks of _the_ _one_ black man - untrustworthy backstabbin’ motherfucker - and decides not to spill the beans.’

‘Could be he’s scared. Could be he don’t know anything.’

‘He knows. Something. See how he looked when you mentioned Devil’s Den?’

‘Maybe he’s got a thing against homos too,’ says Roland as he unlocks the car. ‘Speakin’ of, it’s about time you get your ass over there, do your Nancy Drew shit while I check out Hoyt’s. They’re expectin’ me.’ 

Wayne sighs. ‘Guess so. Sorry to miss the chicken man himself but some folks got some real down-to-earth detectin’ to do. Enjoy the tour, won’t you?’ 

Roland flashes him the finger, reverses onto the road with his shades on and the feeling in his gut back in force. Doesn’t see the curtains twitch in windows of the house behind him, the pale face of a kid peering out. Watching him go.

***

The office is on the third floor of the building, allowing for a good view of the grey rows of laboratories and steel structures in the long shadow of the main power plant beyond. Covered in enough green and red flashing lights, barriers, and cameras to rival Fort Knox.

Roland hadn’t been expecting to meet the boss-man himself (Edward Hoyt an important man, not one to deal with the likes of state police) but there’s something about the grin of the head of security before him that seems to enjoy the fact a bit too much. Roland is small fry in one bigger, bustling ecosystem. A distraction. 

‘Say,’ remarks Roland, playing the dumb-cop part as he peers out the window. ‘It true y’all started off as a chicken farm or is that all local-legend bullshit?’

Harris James chuckles. ‘Chickenshit is more like it, Detective,’ he says, appreciative of his own humour. ‘Turns out all that shit goin’ to waste can be made into something more useful, the discovery of which turned this operation from a few chicken runs and an old barn to the regional energy provider you see before you. Put Hoyt Energy on the map.’

‘Seems pretty high-falutin’ to me.’

‘See that silo?’ asks James, coming to stand by Roland and pointing at the steel cylinder below. ‘Called a digester. I’m no scientist, but my understanding is you burn enough manure in that baby you get a whole lotta methane, which you then convert into energy for ma and pa to power their television with.’ His breath hits the back of Roland’s neck in a way that nearly makes him shudder. ‘And while we may have branched out into other forms of energy-harvestin’, that sure is a favourite among visitors.’

‘Huh. Confess most of what you said went over my head, but I’ll take your word for it.’

‘That’s why I stick to security, Detective.’

Roland wanders over to the desk, makes a show of looking at the guns mounted on the desk. ‘Those both Colts?’ They’re old, flintlock, must be a matter of pride for the man to have them displayed so prominently. 

‘Good eye. Set of 1862 Navys, cap and ball revolver; my great-great-granddaddy carried them in the Battle of Chickamauga,’ James says, flashing his teeth. He picks one from its stand and sits at his desk, toying with the gun all the while. ‘Forgive me for gettin’ to the point, but it seemed on the phone you got other business comin’ here than admirin’ my piece.’

‘That’s right.’ Roland sits down, slaps his knees. Pointedly ignores the double entendre.‘Maybe you’ve seen on the news ‘bout that boy gone missin’ out near West Finger? Now, I know there’s no way a kid coulda climbed through a storm drain into your property but my partner said we oughta check it out.’

There’s something fixed about the attentive look on James’ face, something concealed and hungry. It gives Roland the creeps. 

‘You got camera footage of the storm drain entrance? Would be near the southern property line.’

‘Oh sure,’ says James. Puts down the gun and gets up, smoothing down his combed red hair with a studied gesture. ‘We got cameras all over the place. If you’d follow me, Detective.’

It’s true: there’s a new winking red light for every ten paces they make it down the corridor, blank-eyed lenses watching silently. Roland tries to peer into the glass-walled rooms as they go by but it’s all shiny equipment, white-coated lab assistants. Things way beyond his pay grade. A dark-haired woman talking to a bunch of other similarly dressed scientists does a double take as she passes them in the corridor. Roland makes eye contact and winks; Lori hides her smile and keeps walking without breaking stride. 

‘The mother used to work here you know,’ says James, scanning his keycard and letting Roland pass through yet another door. ‘About ten years back. Knew I recognised the name from somewhere.’ 

‘Who?’

‘Lucy Purcell. Worked on the chicken line, if I recall correctly.’

This stops Roland in his tracks. He’s not sure why, but the thing he might call his intuition is tingling like crazy, setting the hair on the back of his neck on end. ‘You don’t say.’

‘And here we are,’ murmurs James, coming to a stop at a dark door at the end of the corridor. He unlocks it to reveal an entire wall of mounted television screens flickering down at them, a whey-faced guard that snaps to attention from his seat at the comms desk and nearly upsets his cup of coffee all over the controls. James ignores him and crosses to a stack of tapes, runs his finger down their labelled spines.

‘Let’s see, night of the seventh,’ he says. Pulls out a tape. ‘You let the Detective have a look at this, Lowell, and see him out after. I trust this will indulge your partner’s curiosity?’

Roland doesn’t know why he says it — perhaps the certainty pulling at his gut makes him want to push this man, because he finds himself asking, ‘What about the whole week? You keep tapes that long?’

_Bingo._ The accommodating act slips for a moment, greasy smile frozen in place as James’ eyes go hard and cold at the edges. ‘I might ask how that’s relevant to your investigation, Mr. West,’ he says, making it sound like a joke — save one without a punchline. ‘Might wonder if state police thinks it can take advantage of our hospitality without a warrant.’

Roland shrugs and gives his best winning smile; roll over, take the threat like he’s one to cave at such transparent pressure and resist the urge to mash his fist into James’ snide face. ‘Night of the seventh is fine, sir,’ he says, hands up. ‘Hope you’ve had a piss-break, Lowell, cause we’re gonna be here for a while.’

The tension dissipates. James slaps him jovially on the shoulder, makes to leave. ‘Have fun, boys. You come back with your partner anytime, Detective, we’ll give you the proper tour, the full works. Just call ahead is all.’

Roland watches him go. The tape, as he suspected, shows nothing but white rain streaking the dark canvas of the screen and the barely-visible mouth of the storm drain yawning and ominously open in the earth. Nothing in or out. Just monochrome pixels crackling from frame to frame as the hours magically speed past, no boy-shape to be seen. 

Technically, it’s an unsuccessful visit but Roland can’t help but feel an odd triumph as he makes his way to his car: Harris James is hiding something. Lying fuck. He pauses and looks up at the office window above, imagines a solitary figure watching him back even though it’s too far to see.

‘Battle of Chickamauga my ass,’ Roland grunts to himself.

Inside the car, the radio hisses to life. His heart sinks.

He knows he’s heading to Devil’s Den before he even picks up the receiver.

***

There’s a cave and inside the cave is a body. 

Wayne Hays sitting on a rock with his head in his hands, the silence stretching out between them along with the image of Will Purcell laid out stiff and pale and just about beginning to bloat with his fingers laced together in a parody of prayer. A straw doll positioned like a votive marker at the entrance.

‘You okay, man?’ Roland finally says. 

Wayne wipes his hands on his trousers, coughs with his head angled away from his partner. ‘Found some weird fuckin’ tracks further up the trailhead, along with one of those dolls. Not that that matters,’ he says. Voice flat. ’Someone’s gonna have to tell the parents.’

‘Yeah.’ They both know who that’s going to be; Wayne found the body, after all.

Roland thinks of Tom Purcell, alone in his darkened house, and tries to swallow the sick feeling that rises up like a tide and threatens to pull him under.

‘I should’ve promised,’ he says to no one in particular. Wayne gets up and stumbles down the slope, leading the way.

They've got one more house call to make. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did _not_ intend to dedicate a whole chapter to this but here we are! Alternatives to reading this include putting on Laura Palmer's funeral and imagining that it's filmed in one really queasy long tracking shot. With more screaming. Twin Peaks fusion rights.

Roland loses some time over the next few days, alternating between deep, drugged sleep and hours sitting awake in front of the TV clutching a bottle to his chest. Trying not to think of the body, Lucy Purcell’s howl of despair, Tom crumpled in on himself and shaking. Gutted. The fucking deer bleeding all over the damp grass. 

At the office, there’s routine. Standard procedure for when a child gets murdered. Photographs developed, paper with names pinned up, timelines mapped out. 

‘Remind me, who called the Feebs?’ asks Roland, once again finding his creamer gone as he peers into the fridge — the new task force or the FBI suits all main suspects. ‘Thought it took 72 hours for ‘em to get involved yet here they are, aimin’ to sabotage my fuckin’ coffee three days in a row.’

‘Told you, they came down early as a favour for the G.A.,’ repeats Wayne. ‘I called it in, they were already in the area. Alright with me them takin’ the scene.’

‘Fuckin’ politics. Less dicks swingin’ around here the better,’ Roland grunts, sipping his ruined coffee. ‘Hey Bowen, you take my creamer?’

‘I don’t even drink the stuff.’ Bowen slaps a few more photos of the chaff dolls down on the table, rubs his jaw. ‘You two are lookin’ sharp. You got one of those jackets in every colour, West, or does it change with your mood like one of those gimmicky rings?’

Roland straighten his lapels. ‘My mood is fuck you, case you’re wonderin’. We got a funeral to get to.’ 

The look on Bowen’s face is almost worth it as they march their way out of the room. If only Roland could have the luxury of forgetting where he and Wayne are headed, he might enjoy it, but with their matching black outfits it’s too obvious how they’ll be spending their morning. 

It’s going to be a long one. 

***

They stop at the Purcell house before things are set to kick off at St. Michael’s. Roland with his hands sunk deep in his pockets, not looking forward to the next few hours as they trudge up the driveway. The curtains of neighbouring houses shift back into place as Wayne turns and takes one last sweep of the street. 

‘Dan!’ hollers the voice of Lucy Purcell as Roland knocks. ‘Door!’

A man peers out at them, shaggy hair and devil-style goatee that looks a sight too jaunty for the occasion. ‘Didn’t know pigs were invited,’ he says, more out of habit than spite. ‘Think y’all could keep away for one day, huh?’

‘We spoke on the phone,’ Wayne says. Pushes past him. ‘Just got a few things to run through ‘fore we can get out of your hair.’

‘Sure, come right in. Ain’t like we’re busy or nothin’.’

Lucy comes bustling into the kitchen, bottle-blonde hair combed up and smudged mascara blotted around her eyes. ‘Zip me up,’ she says to her cousin, and he goes around to close the back of her dress like it’s familiar territory.

‘We appreciate you lettin’ us come by,’ says Wayne. ‘Only one thing to say, really, if you could keep it in mind — if there’s anybody strange, someone you don’t know that catches your eye just watchin’, actin’ odd, you come and tell us right away. Know you got other things to think of but it’d be a real help if you see someone like that hangin’ around.’

‘Keep an eye out for child-killers. Got it.’ Lucy snorts a sick sort of laugh, lights up a cigarette and glowers at them. ‘That all?’

‘Mr. Purcell around?’ asks Roland. 

‘He’s shut himself in Will’s room, been there all night. Hope to shit he’s ready cause I ain’t goin’ in there to get him.’

Dan gives a little shrug, puts his hand on Lucy’s shoulder all comforting-like. ‘Tom’s always been a bit fuckin’ strange: neurotic, you know? Always knew he’d snap someday.’

‘It’s a hard thing,’ Roland says. Heads to the closed door with the kid’s name tacked on the front instead of grabbing Dan O’Brien by his collar to demonstrate how different people can snap in all different kinds of ways.

‘Make sure he puts this on.’ Lucy chucks a balled-up tie at him across the room, like the man’s sartorial choices are Roland’s fucking responsibility. ‘It’s new.’

The conversation starts up behind him and Roland knocks on the door. There’s no answer, just muffled noise that might be music coming through the walls. ‘Tom?’ He waits a moment and tries the handle; it’s not locked so he enters, shuts the door behind him.

Tom is sitting cross-legged on the floor, suit jacket draped over his knees and white shirt rolled to his elbows. A battered tape-deck before him with a tape winding round and around inside. It’s semi-dark and strange. Curtains still drawn.

‘Mr. Purcell?’ says Roland gently. ‘Tom?’ 

The light switch doesn’t work — at first he thinks it’s broken but then he see that Tom’s got all the light bulbs laid out on the carpet before him. The main light, the bedside lamp, the reading lamp from Will’s desk stripped bare and empty.

Tom doesn’t turn around. ‘Hear that?’

‘What?’

‘Listen.’ He cranks up the volume and Roland recognises the song from the charts _(“Next phase, new wave, dance craze, anyways, it’s still rock and roll to me”)_ and sure, he’s heard the song before but he doesn’t know what Tom’s asking him to do.

‘Billy Joel, right? I hate that guy,’ says Roland but Tom shakes his head. Hits pause and turns to look up at Roland.

‘Will taped that off the radio,’ he says, and Roland blinks down at him. 

He’s shaved off his moustache, hair trimmed but still unruly. Almost unrecognisable without it. Somehow easier to read. Wan and clawed with tiredness but with a manic kind of glint in his eye as he continues, ‘You can fuckin’ hear me and Lucy arguin’ in the background of every fuckin’ song. See?’ 

He fast-forwards the tape, surfaces at some guitar solo — and sure enough, Roland can just about hear voices echoing vaguely behind the whining noise. Hits the button again. The next song the same, and the next. Sound of a smashing plate, yelling, a door slamming. 

‘Why didn’t he tell us to shut the fuck up?’ Tom says. Forehead knitted together with the effort of holding back his tears. ‘He just put up with it. Our only kid and we couldn’t even…couldn’t even do right by him. _Shit._ ’

‘Hey,’ says Roland stupidly. He gets down on the floor beside him, back against Will’s bed. ‘Can’t think like that.’

Tom ducks his head into his knees and starts to cry, frame shaking with suppressed sobs. Roland wants to put a hand on his shoulder but it feels wrong somehow; he’s caught Tom with his hurt torn open and exposed, unhinged. Too intimate by far — close to touching a beat animal. One that still has its teeth.

So he just mumbles comforting words, wishes he knows better ones to help with the pain. ‘You’re okay,’ Roland says. ‘It’s alright. Hey.’

Tom stifles a moan and draws in a shaky breath. His eyes are red and swollen, despairing, pitted with grief and self-disgust. ‘My boy’s dead,’ he rasps, blank and far away. ‘I had one job. Raise that kid, couldn’t even do that right.’ 

‘Shh,’ Roland says and this time he reaches out and puts the palm of his hand against the back of Tom’s neck as if soothing a spooked horse. Rubs his thumb against short bristles of hair, the leaping muscle beneath. 

It takes a moment for Tom to react: he doesn’t push Roland away, doesn’t yell or leap up or hit him. Instead he takes one long second, trembling under Roland’s touch as if only now realising that he is experiencing a kindness —and starts weeping in earnest.

‘Oh, fuck,’ grunts Roland and pulls Tom into him as Tom clutches blindly at his jacket with his fists and buries his face at Roland’s chest. ‘Breathe with me, Tom. Come on.’

He holds Tom close for what feels like a long while as Tom cries a wet patch in the front of Roland’s jacket; a drowning man holding onto the the only thing anchoring him in a sea of grief. One that eventually subsides. 

Tom sits up, wipes his face. Sniffs. 

‘Better?’ Roland says. Drops his hand to his side.

‘No. Least it’s out of the way. I hate cryin’ in front of strangers.’

Roland sits there, trying to figure if it’s a good thing Tom doesn’t think of him as a stranger when the context of their relationship is so fucking awful. ‘I, uh, see you’ve gotten rid of the tash,’ he says, rubbing his own lip. ‘It’s…different.’

‘First haircut my mother gave me in twenty years.’ Tom rubs the back of his head, the clean-shaven side of his jaw. ‘Felt like a change. Since everything else has. Feels good not to know myself when I look in the mirror.’

Roland extracts the crumpled tie from his pocket and tries to pass it over, but Tom just lets out a wet laugh. ‘I ain’t worn a tie since…never, really,’ he mumbles. ‘Don’t even know how you go about startin’ to tie that shit.’

‘You’re in luck, seein’ as I wear one of these every fuckin’ day,’ Roland says, looping the tie around his own neck. ‘Wayne, he wears clip-ons, but I reckon a decent man oughta walk around thinkin’ he’s gonna get strangled and get on with it. Spice of life and all that.’

He fiddles with the length until it’s just right - not too uneven, not too wide. Gives the finished product to Tom, who looks like he’d prefer a noose as he slips it over his head and under his starched collar.

‘There we go,’ Roland says. He straightens the knot where it sits under Tom’s throat with both hands and sits back. ‘You’re good to go.’

‘Good as I’ll ever get. Goddamn.’ 

Roland coughs, gets to his feet and kicks one of the lightbulbs with his boot; a distraction from the odd feeling that makes him want to lock the door and shut out the thought of funerals, along with anything else that might leave Tom so utterly unmoored. ‘They too bright or what?’

‘Huh? Oh, that.’ Tom fiddles with his cuffs. ‘Fuckin’ lights kept flickerin’ like to do my head in. Annoyin’ as shit. Oughta fix it but it ain’t exactly on the top of my to-do list.’

There’s a knock on the door and Wayne sticks his head into the room, somber and professional in a way Roland’s not quite managing. He clears his throat awkwardly, nods down at Tom on the floor.

‘It’s time.’

***

They come back to the house once it’s all over. 

Roland stands in the corner of the sitting room feeling cauterised and numb, watching the townsfolk perform their grief over cups of coffee and cake and pre-cooked casserole. It’s harder spotting uninvited folk than he realised — half the town showed up at the church service, and there’s all kinds of people coming in offering condolences that he doesn’t think had any great relationship with any of the Purcells. Nothing like a funeral for getting people together. 

Sure, there’s Tom’s parents sitting in the corner by their son, Dan O’Brien smoking what smells like a joint on the porch (confident Wayne and Roland don’t have the balls to tell him off, not here. He’s right.) And then there’s Amelia Reardon and few more of the boy’s teachers, the priest, an old baseball coach, parents of the kids in Will’s class with their sons and daughters stiff and laced up in their Sunday best. 

‘I used to look after him, you know, when he was a baby,’ says the large woman standing next to him, tears sliding down her face. He recognises her from before they found the body: a friend of Lucy’s. Margaret Something.

‘What’s that?’

‘Will. He was so small,’ she says. ‘I used to bring him out and about, the supermarket, the park; people would ask, _Is he yours?_ And I’d say no cause it was the truth, but there was part of me that liked it. I’d have been glad for it. He was a charm.’

‘Ah. You look after him a lot?’

‘Mostly that year when Tom was workin’ offshore in Texas and Lucy was on her own. And she spent most of her time up at the chicken line, mind, so I tried to be a help when I could.’ She sniffs and dabs at her eyes. ‘Whatever failings they had, they didn’t deserve this. Oh _God._ ’

He’s not a part of her grief so he merely nods politely, tries to appear sympathetic as she sniffs into her handkerchief with no sign of abatement.

‘I’m sorry,’ she finally says, still weeping after a few protracted and excruciating minutes. ‘You’ll have to excuse me.’ 

’S’alright,’ Roland mumbles as Margaret heads for the bathroom with one final squeeze of his arm — and he’s just starting to think that he might be free from more potentially painful interactions when Eloise Purcell appears at his elbow with a platter of cocktail sausages. 

‘Eat something, for God’s sake,’ she says, more of an instruction than a request. ‘Thought you might starve to death before that woman quit bawling.’

It’s hard to reconcile this short, matter-of-fact woman with her son; she has dark curly hair, yes, but the rest of Tom’s looks obviously come from his dour, thin father. Roland takes a sausage skewer to appease her.

‘I don’t see how anybody could call themselves a friend of my daughter-in-law, but there you go. One of those mysteries of life. It’s down to Lucy we saw so little of Will, for all the welcome she’d give us. May not surprise you I’m feeling a mite resentful of that right now.’

‘Mmm,’ says Roland. 

‘What kind of woman lets pettiness get in the way of her own child and his kin? What kind of wife runs around like…’ Mrs. Purcell stops and takes a breath, hand at her breast. Leans in confidentially. ‘I think she had an abortion around ten years back, maybe more since then. Is it awful to hope this is the end of it? That boy was the only reason they got together in the first place.’

She wipes her eyes and lets out a small laugh.

‘You must think I’m an awful mother, nice man such as yourself.’

‘No, ma’am.’ Roland would rather catalogue all of the crime scene photographs back at the office than spend another moment trying to school his face into polite interest. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

Eloise lowers her voice. ‘Were you the one who found him? Will? It’s hard to know what to say but I reckon a “thank you” would be a start.'

‘Ah, no, that was my partner,’ says Roland, inordinately grateful as Wayne sidles into the room, gives Roland a meaningful look before going out onto the porch. ‘Speak of the devil. If you’ll excuse me, ma’am.’ 

Roland clasps Eloise Purcell’s hand in condolence, heads to the door as fast as decency will allow before she can waylay him with more finger-food. Wayne’s lighting up a cigarette outdoors, his gaze fixed on the opposite side of the street. ‘You seein’ this?’ he asks as Roland shuts the screen door and joins him. He does.

Brett Woodard is standing by himself on the sidewalk, hands clasped behind his back as he stares steadily at the Purcell house. The wind tugs at his hair and open duffel jacket but he doesn’t look uncomfortable, his expression unchanging as Wayne and Roland cross the street towards him.

‘You know how this looks, right?’ Wayne says.

Woodard remains unflappable. Staring past Wayne as if facing off against a drill instructor. ‘I’m just tryin’ to stay a part of something,’ he says. ‘Everyone else is here, huh, the community? You sayin’ I can’t be here?’

‘No. Just remarkin’ that for a man who said he don’t want any trouble, you sure seem to be lookin’ for some.’ 

'I might not be good at a whole of normal things, but this? This is normal to me. _Funerals._ I got kids of my own, Sergeant. Just here to pay my respects.’

Wayne rubs his jaw, turns to Roland with a shrug. ‘There a law against him standin’ here?’

‘Nope.’

‘Okay. Keep in mind there’s emotions ridin’ high, white men up there got a lot of energy and nowhere to put it. Lookin’ for someone to blame. If I see any shit gettin’ started out here in the street…’

‘Yessir. Won’t be me startin’ it, you have my word.’

‘Alright then,’ concedes Wayne. 

There’s already some folks casting glances at Woodard’s solitary vigil as they return to the house. Groups of men muttering under their breath and casting dark glances out the window as if they’d happily pound Woodard’s face into the pavement if Roland and Wayne weren’t standing two feet away.

‘I don’t feel good about this,’ Roland mutters to Wayne. ‘How many these guys you think are packin’?’

‘Dunno. Let’s say half. Better hope their sense of propriety gets in the way of their needin’ to beat the shit outta someone.’

The kitchen light seems to flicker in sympathy with the anger and frustration crackling through the house like electricity; Roland has to remind himself it’s a bad connection, not some kind of signal as the veneer of reverential sadness starts to wear away. The threat of violence imminent.

Somehow the first punch still catches Roland by surprise, mainly because Brett Woodard isn’t in the vicinity when it happens.

Things are quiet, Wayne having holed himself up with Ms. Reardon and the other teachers a good half-hour ago leaving Roland with nothing better to do than stand by the sink with yet another glass of unpleasant tap water. He listens to the group of men gathered around the counter, watches the light flicker on and off, and tries not to count the minutes until the whole thing is over and he and Wayne can get the hell out of dodge.

Tom comes over to the fridge to get another beer right as one of the neighbours says, ‘What the fuck does that trashman think he’s doin’ here anyway, just standin’ out there? We all know he did it. Fuckin’ pervert, always hangin’ around botherin’ folk. Watchin’ our kids.’

There’s a moment as they all realise that Tom is staring at them.

‘What are _you_ doin’ here anyway, Carl?’ he finally says, snapping the beer tab with force.

‘Don’t know what you mean, Tom. Here to pay respects like everyone else.’ The man is rubbing his beard, uncomfortable. Tom’s gaze blank and unsettling. ‘You know Hunter always liked hanging around Will n’ all.’

‘That’s funny,’ Tom says, voice cracked. ‘I remember Will comin’ home from school one day, asked me what a faggot was. After your son called him one. Guess that’s just bein’ friends, huh?’

‘Aw, you know how boys are like.’ 

Roland puts down his glass and edges closer, just in case. 

‘Then I thought, it weren’t all that surprising, seein’ as he must’ve picked it up from you. You think my kid was a faggot? Or d’you just throw that word around, see where it lands?’ 

‘I never said nothin’ like that about Will. He was just a kid.’ 

A vein pulses in Tom’s forehead. ‘Not about _Will._ ’

‘Tom, I know you’re hurtin’ —’ says Carl, right as Tom hits him square in the face. 

Roland leaps forward, grabs Tom by the arm before he can get another punch in. ‘Hey. Hey!’ he says, low and harsh before the rest of the mourners can figure out what happened. ‘Not here. Not now.’

Tom throws his hand off like it’s burning through his suit. ‘Why don’t y’all get the fuck outta my house? Actin’ like you give two shits about my son,’ he says, wired and shaking, readying to take another swing. ‘Fuck you!’ 

‘I’m gonna let that one go,’ Carl growls. Spits some blood on the kitchen floor. ‘Considerin’ the circumstances.’

Things could still get ugly: Roland with his hands up between the two men squaring off against each other, prepared to go for his weapon if he has to. 

That’s when the singing starts up.

It’s so unexpected the whole house falls quiet, listening to the swell of song coming from outside. Something gospel. Harmonious. Amelia Reardon crosses to the front door and steps outside, and the hymn drifts through the air and fills the room. Anger dissipates into confusion and quiet as everyone strains to hear.

‘What the fuck is that?’ hisses Tom. He pushes past Roland and stumbles outside, comes to a dead stop on the porch steps. Halted by the bizarre scene taking place on the opposite side of the street.

There’s a group of five, maybe six, black women gathered on the sidewalk — an odd enough sight for this neighbourhood, but what’s even stranger is that they’re all singing _Amazing Grace_ in perfect harmony, impervious to the staring neighbours and Purcells. It makes the hairs on Roland’s neck stand on end. Dan O’Brien sits on the stoop, humming along with the impromptu choir, laughing to himself like it’s one great joke only he can understand.

‘What’s goin’ on?’ murmurs Wayne from behind. 

‘Damned if I know,’ says Roland. Something odd and moving about the whole thing.

They watch as Amelia comes back across the street, pausing before addressing the small group crowded on the porch. ‘That lady, Camila,’ she begins, meaning the woman taking lead, ‘says they’ve come all the way from Davis Junction. Apparently they all used to work the chicken line with your wife. Back in the day. Figured they ought to come once they saw the news.’

Tom frowns. ‘You tellin’ me Lucy was _friends_ with these people?’

‘…I don’t think they’d call it that, no.’ Amelia looks calm and collected, even while speaking loud over Dan’s hysterical laughter as the women hit a new verse. 

‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ.’ Lucy staggers out of the house at last, staring out at the street with her lip twisted around her cigarette. ‘Those God-botherin’ cunts. Can’t leave me alone even now…bet they’re fuckin’ lovin’ this.’ She lurches down the steps and yells, ‘Happy now, are we? Guess I got what I deserve for not acceptin’ Jesus into my heart or some _shit!’_

The women keep singing. Not ignoring her, but simply not allowing her words to disrupt their hymn.

Tom puts a hand out, tentative and careful but she shrugs him off. ‘Make them stop,’ Lucy spits, vicious as she rounds on him. ‘I ain’t listenin’ to this shit, not today, understand?’

‘Preach,’ mumbles Dan, chuckling as Lucy stalks back inside and slams the door behind her. Leaving Tom staring at the women like they’ve stepped off the fucking moon. 

‘Might as well invite the whole county,’ he says, face gone red with a mixture of alcohol and embarrassment. ‘Fuck’s sake. Whole thing’s turnin’ into a joke.’

He rolls up his sleeves and strides over to the women, and for a second Roland thinks he’s going to start shouting but there’s just a long pause; Tom’s lone figure frozen in front of the group of strangers singing to the street. To _him_. ‘Some of them have lost kids,’ Amelia tells no one in particular. There seems to be some kind of silent communication going on, Tom with his fists balled up at his sides and the women looking on kindly — as if he isn’t an angry white man with bloodied knuckles.

Tom starts to cry.

The women take him by the hands and keep on singing, something sad and joyous and holy about it all at once. 

Roland ignores the tightness in his own throat, counts to ten before heading inside. The porch light flickers behind him.


	4. Chapter 4

A full week after Will first went missing Roland comes out of the station to find Amelia Reardon leaning against his car. It’s a Saturday and he’s working; he’s not in the mood for small talk, not when the events of the funeral are still weighing heavily on his mind and they’ve made little to no progress on the chaff dolls or the scene. No suspect to even pin on the board. 

‘He ain’t here,’ Roland says, unlocking the driver’s side and throwing his coat inside. ‘Lover-boy stand you up?’

‘I’m not here for Wayne.’ Amelia has a sensible coat, sensible shoes, a bag clutched in her hand, and is eyeing him up like he should know something he doesn’t. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think we’ve been formally introduced: Amelia Reardon.’

They shake over the top of the car, a stretch. Roland leans against the roof and raises his eyebrows. ‘Pleasure’s all mine,’ he grunts. ‘I’d introduce myself ‘cept it seems you’ve already got my rank and number. Now what’re you doin’ if not lookin’ for my partner?’

‘There’s something you needs done and Wayne said you could help. I think you’d call it following a lead.’

‘You know what Wayne’s doin’ right now? 

‘He’s in the woods. Going over the scene.’

She sure knows more than she lets on. Roland wonders what else Wayne’s told her about the investigation with the heady thought of womanly favours within his reach. ‘Indulgin’ himself, is what he’s doin’,’ he says. ‘Which I said I’d cover him for, but that means I can’t drop everything and run away with you no matter how charmin’ that prospect might be.’

‘It’s relevant. I’ll explain on the way.’

She actually has the gall to get into his car. Roland stands there a good moment in disbelief before getting in after her and starting the engine. 

‘I’ll drop you off in Fayetteville,’ he says, and pulls out of the car park. 

‘That won’t be necessary.’ She doesn’t seem fazed by being in a car with a strange man at all. It rankles. ‘Do you remember the women at Will’s parents’ house? The ones from Davis Junction?’

Roland lights a cigarette, just on the off-chance she might be a anti-tobacco nut. ‘Kind of hard to have missed ‘em.’

‘I talked to some after. How many people do you think have gone missing from that community in the past two months? If you had to guess.’

‘I’m sorry, where’s this goin’?’

‘They told me so far four adults and two children have disappeared. In six weeks.’

‘Okay. So, that’s…bad. But I fail to see how that’s related to catchin’ the son of a bitch that killed Will Purcell.’

‘Apparently there’s been no great movement on the police’s side of things. Not that I have to spell that out to you; Wayne said you’re less deliberately blind than the rest.’

‘That’s a ringin’ endorsement. Remind me to put it on my card.’

_‘Roland,’_ she says, like she’s earned the right to his first name by merit of Wayne’s impressionabledick. ‘There could be more slipping through the cracks, not just Will. Don’t you want to do right by them too?’

‘Naw, lady, you don’t get to pull that card. Wayne reserves the title of annoyin’ bastard in this car.’

Amelia regards him steadily for a while, taking his measure. Lights a cigarette of her own and rolls down the window so her perfectly coiffed hair ripples in the breeze. ‘It’s important. I’m going to go there myself whether you like it or not, I just thought someone should come along. Someone who’s able to do something about it.’

Roland sucks on his smoke, chews over the competing urges battling in his head. He should tell her to go to hell. He doesn’t.

***

Davis Junction is a series of run-down stoops, kudzu sprouting up through pavement, trailers lined up like children’s blocks along the strip of railroad that separates the inhabitants from their white neighbours. A lonely liquor store. Kids playing with chalk on the sidewalk that stand up to peer in at the car as they go by, faces tight with adult watchfulness. 

Roland keeps driving against his better judgement. 

‘Hey,’ he says after a long pause. More ramshackle houses, only different from those across the tracks by the colour of the men sitting outside smoking hand-rolled tobacco. ‘You tell these women you’re comin’? Cause I don’t see ‘em bein’ too happy you bringin’ a cop in here all unannounced.’

‘I said I might drop by.’

‘Oh Jesus. That’s a no, then.’

‘Just let me talk to them, okay?’ Amelia says. ‘Don’t do anything…combative. We’re here to listen.’

‘I believe in the brotherhood of all men, just not with ‘em that don’t want brotherhood with me. Should it come down to that.’

She stifles a surprised laugh. ‘You think you can impress me with a few lines from Malcolm X? You think you know me?’

‘Oh, you know. You’re smarter than Wayne, pretty set on draggin’ me down here to save the children. That and him complainin’ that his new beau’s practically an ex-Panther gives me some idea of where your interests lie, if I was to want to impress you. Which I don’t.’

‘He’s being dramatic. I was barely on the fringes.’

‘That’s like bein’ in the Red Army to Purple Hays,’ says Roland. ‘Also it’s funny, since you’re actin’ like you know _me_ after chattin’ with Wayne for what, a week?’

‘You’re right.’ Her voice pensive. ‘We don’t know each other at all. I’m sorry for that assumption.’

Roland doesn’t know what to say to that so he follows her instructions, turns down a potholed lane to a trailer with an old Chevy set up on cinderblocks out front. Checks his gun and his badge before getting out and trailing Amelia up the drive to the screen door. She knocks, stands back. Carefully patting down her hair. 

A dog barks inside and Roland shifts his hand toward his belt, just in case. Dogs make him nervy on the best of days, let alone when he’s surrounded by folks with centuries of racial animosity and a deep distrust of cops in any form. 

‘What y’all want?’ grunts the man that opens the door, muscles straining under his wifebeater with the effort of holding onto the lead of a particularly mean-looking pitbull. A few neighbours come drifting over from across the street to settle in Roland’s blind-spot which doesn’t calm him down at all.

‘I was hoping to talk to Camila, if she’s there,’ says Amelia, with the fake peppiness of a Jehovah’s Witness and a Girl Scout rolled into one. ‘She said it would be alright if I dropped by.’

‘Who’s that white man over there? Friend of yours?’

The dog growls. 

‘I was hoping we could talk to you about Faith. About what happened.’ 

The man spits onto the grass, rubs his trimmed stubble, face gone dark. One of the men on the sidewalk moves around to Roland’s left and peers into the car. 

‘Looks like white-boy here’s a cop!’ he calls to the street at large, skipping back from the window as Roland turns with his hand on his gun. A few folks let out grumbles of discontent. ‘Lady, we don’t care for no pigs round here less we’re havin’ street barbecue. Curtis, you cookin’ tonight?’

‘Guess we’ll see, won’t we?’ 

Curtis goes back inside, leaving Roland and Amelia to listen to the unwelcoming murmuring of the men and women around them. Roland feels the sweat gathering at the nape of his neck but he doesn’t want to lift a hand and spook the crowd around them. He’s just starting to think Curtis is going to re-appear with a shotgun braced against his shoulder when a woman pushes open the screen door and nods down at Amelia.

‘Child,’ she says, propping her hands on her hips and raising one eyebrow. ‘Here I was thinkin’ you was all talk, but here you are. You can come on in, but you gotta tell your policeman to do something ‘bout that gun of his ‘fore I let him into my house.’

Amelia turns to him. A seemingly simple solution to a simple problem but Roland isn’t about to chuck his service weapon into a ditch for just about anybody. ‘You tell your man inside to hold the fuck onto that dog,’ he finally says. ‘Okay, ma’am?’

‘Dante’s a sweet old thing. You got nothin’ to worry about.’

‘That don’t make me feel a whole lot better,’ he says, but still snaps open the chamber of his revolver and empties the bullets into his jacket pocket. Holds up the disarmed gun. ‘We happy?’

‘Happy as can be. Come right up.’ 

The house is neater than it looks on the outside. Roland wipes his boots on the mat, follows Amelia into the sitting room decked out in colourful crochet and patterned throws. They sit. Roland tries to appear interested int the large faded cross-stitch over the door that declares _The Joy of the Lord is My Strength,_ can’t quite manage it. 

‘Y’all want coffee? Tea?’ 

Amelia and Roland both politely decline but Camila just laughs. ‘I seen you perk up like a hound-dog moment you stepped in, white man, so don’t insult me sayin’ you ain’t dyin’ for a cup of joe.’

‘If it’s no bother, ma’am.’

‘Oh, you found a polite one all right, child. He a bit on the short side, but at least this boyfriend of yours got manners.’ 

Amelia almost blushes, says quickly, laughing: ‘More like my boyfriend’s boyfriend, ma’am. We’re not together.’

‘Ah, well, ain’t none of my business,’ Camila chuckles, bustles off to the kitchen. Leaving Amelia and Roland in awkward silence. Roland twists the ring on his hand, tries to tamp down the furious feeling bubbling up in his chest until he can’t hold it in any longer. Amelia’s casual words ringing in his head.

‘What the hell was that?’ he hisses under his breath.

Amelia blinks. ‘I’ve known Wayne for a week. It was meant to be a joke.’ 

‘You think it’s funny, tryin to get me killed twice? I’ve already got one fuckin’ target on my back, thank you very much.’ 

There’s a long pause as Amelia stares at him in utter confusion, lips parted in a wordless question. ‘I don’t see what —’ she says, and then her eyes go wide. ‘Unless..?’

He’s fucked it up. Overreacted and exposed himself like an idiot over a stupid joke, just because he’s on edge and surrounded by people that seem just as likely to take a pot-shot at him than serve him coffee. 

Roland knows what she’s about to say before she can open her mouth.

‘Don’t.’

‘You’re scared,’ she says softly, oh-so-calm and collected. Like she’s cracked the code, deconstructed him down to the quick like he’s some kind of novel to pore over and dissect in front of a class of bored students. She has his weakness in the palm of her hand. Could crush him with a word.

‘I said, _don’t.’_

‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’ 

‘What you want me to say? All kinds of folk scare me, not just the black ones?’ he says, low and angry. Blood pumping in his ears. ‘Except with the others, I get to call ‘em my friends —bars after work, fourth of July barbecues, fuckin’ family dinners. This ain’t in the same neighbourhood, _sister,_ so forgive me I get nervous you crackin’ wise like that.’

The look of utter mortification spreading on Amelia’s face is hard to miss. He glances away. Feels a perverse sort of satisfaction from it — and that’s when Camila comes back into the room balancing three china cups of coffee on a tray, dog trotting at her heels.

‘So, y’all want to talk about Faith,’ she says, handing a cup to Roland, a cup to Amelia. The dog snuffles over and shoves its head in Roland’s lap, nearly upsetting his coffee. He manages not to swear. ‘About time someone from across the tracks came down here.’ 

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Amelia says. Steady once more.

There’s a tin of condensed milk on the tray; Roland ladles in teaspoon after teaspoon, gives it a taste. Not half-bad. ‘That was a nice thing you did at the Purcells,’ he says, just to clear the air. ’Must’ve taken some courage to go out there.’

‘They’s hurtin’ just like us - maybe even more so, since they ain’t got the Lord to give ‘em comfort,’ she says. ‘Man, that Lucy, she may be meaner than a polecat but she’s no worse than you or me. All God’s children.’

‘Amen,’ Roland mumbles. Amelia shoots him a look. He can feel the dog drooling a wet patch in his trousers but he can’t bring himself to shove it off, not with both women watching.

‘With Faith, least we’ve got our community around us. God to guide us. She’s been missin’ three weeks but I pray every day; thanksgiving and petition.’

‘Could you tell us more about her? What happened the day she disappeared?’ asks Amelia.

Camila lowers her teacup and smooths the fabric of her dress. ‘Faith and Kimberley was playin’ out by the park, as they do most days. Come dark Kimberley was the only one who came home. Said she couldn’t find her sister anyplace and got scared bein’ out there by herself.’ 

‘Did you make a missing persons report?’ Roland interjects. ‘State or local?’

‘Sure we did, police department out in West Finger. They said they’d get on it but it don’t seem that they’re doin’ much.’ 

A young kid pokes her head shyly around the doorframe, whispers in her mother’s ear with wide eyes fixed on Roland. Camila nods and pulls her girl into her lap. ‘Yeah baby, that’s a policeman - but ain’t nobody in trouble. We’re just talkin’ about Faith.’

Roland pulls out his notebook and tries to look less intimidating, less white. ‘It okay if I ask Kimberley here a few questions?’

The girl nods. 

‘Was there anybody else in the park when you were playin’, Miss? Anybody at all. Could be important.’ 

Kimberley ducks her head. Whispers into Camila’s ear again, then says to the room: ‘Faith wouldn’t believe me.’ She fiddles with her braids. ‘I made a picture.’

‘You get your drawing, honey. That’s a great idea.’ The kid scampers off and Camila leans back, lets out a long breath. Shrugs. ‘We tried gettin’ her to talk more but she’s real quiet since Faith disappeared.’

Roland passes her his pen and paper, tries not to think of a little black girl lying out in a cave with her hands clasped together like Will Purcell. ‘Could you write down names and addresses of the other folk gone missin’ round here? Think we’ve got some house-calls to do.’ 

There’s a stretch of not-quite silence: the scratching of the pen, the music playing out back, his own breathing. The flat slap of Kimberley’s bare feet as she comes running back into the room and thrusts a crayon drawing into Amelia’s hands. Roland scoots over on the couch and they peer down at the drawing together, at the green and brown of crudely drawn forest. The bold black lines.

It’s a child’s drawing, sure, but there’s a clearly rendered figure standing among the trees.

Amelia frowns. ‘Does it look to you like that thing —’ 

‘— Doesn’t have a face?’ says Roland. ‘Yeah. That’s exactly what it looks like.’

***

Roland’s buzzing with excitement as he knocks on the door of Wayne’s apartment. It’s late, night gone cold and windy but nothing can kill the sense of accomplishment that’s been building since the drive home from Davis Junction. They have a lead. 

Wayne opens the door in sweats and a white t-shirt, civilian clothes. It’s been a while since Roland’s seen him without a suit and his stupid clip-on tie: normally he’d make a dumb comment but he’s too wired to waste time fucking around on small-talk.

‘Hey —’ says Wayne, but Roland’s already pushing past him into the hall.

‘Damn, that girl of yours might be better off doin’ our jobs for us,’ he says, shaking the chill from his fingers and feet. ‘She got good instincts. Put us to shame.’

Wayne crosses to the cabinet and pours Roland a drink. Keeps his own glass gripped tight in his hand as he asks, ‘You seen Amelia?’

‘Yeah, she said you told her to —’ He pauses. Realising how she played him. ‘Shit. There I was thinkin’ you wanted me to help her out. Had this bee in her bonnet about Davis Junction, wouldn’t let off till I agreed to go with her and interview a few folks.’

‘You went out to Davis Junction? With _Amelia?_ ’

‘Yeah, man. Reverse sundown town road trip. Take a look at this.’

He unfolds a map from his jacket and spreads it out on Wayne’s coffee table, points to the X’s marked out in red pen. ‘Here we got Devil’s Den, where Will went missin’,’ he explains, prods the spot. ‘And here we got places other folk’ve vanished from in the past six weeks. See?’ 

Wayne frowns, puts down his drink. ‘I don’t get it. Who else we lookin’ for?’ 

‘Two kids, four adults, all from this area or thereabouts disappeared with no fuss, no nothin’. Add the Purcell kid into the mix and you get —’ He pulls out his pen, connects the dots to create two circles on the map. Jabs his finger into the epicentre. ‘Fuckin’ Hoyt Energy, man. Bang smack in the middle of it all.’ 

‘That’s…’ Wayne sits back in his chair and looks at Roland long and sharp. ‘I know this one’s hittin’ you hard, man, but this is far out. You, uh, been usin’ those bennies a lot since last week? Gettin’ any sleep?’

‘What?’ 

‘You seem a bit hyped is all.’ 

‘I’m hyped cause it’s a fuckin’ break in the case. Why, what’ve you found out on your lone wolf reconnaissance bullshit?’

‘I was gonna ring you,’ Wayne says, dead tired. ‘I don’t think the boy died anywhere near Devil’s Den — sorry if that pokes a hole in this conspiracy thing you’ve got goin’, but the whole thing’s fucked. Scene’s all wrong.’ 

The bottom drops out of his stomach: Wayne doesn’t believe him. ‘Maybe you’re readin’ it wrong.’

‘You really gonna go there, Mr. Motor Pool?’ Wayne grunts. ‘I combed the woods all day. There’s nothin’ that looks like the site of death, not near the bike and not near the body. Killer must’ve planted ‘em there.’ 

‘The others still make sense. Remember what Woodard said, ‘bout the thing with no face? I got a secondary descriptor today, same fuckin’ thing. Could be our perp. Guy in a ski mask maybe, some shit like that.’

Wayne pushes himself off the couch, swinging around to glare down at Roland like he’s asking him to bet his career on a three-legged mule. ‘You don’t even have bodies! Christ, if I tried comin’ to upper management with some wild story about some faceless dude prowling around Hoyt Energy they’d laugh me out of the building. Listen to yourself.’

‘I’m tellin’ you, it’s all connected,’ says Roland, on his feet now, near to prodding Wayne in the chest. ‘When’ve I ever asked you to take a leap of faith? Risk that spotless reputation of yours?’

‘We can’t go with this. I don’t know what’s up with you, ridin’ around with Amelia, followin’ leads we never agreed on…’

‘Are you _jealous?_ Christ, Purple.’ For a moment it looks like Wayne might hit him, right here and now like they’re two kids squabbling over a girl — what a ridiculous way to get his ass kicked, especially after thinking the girl in question was set to get him queer-bashed only that morning. He nearly laughs in Wayne’s face.

Wayne glowers. ‘I ain’t stoppin’ you from doin’ what you like with Amelia, she’s a free agent ain’t she? Just don’t come here tryin’ to get me to subscribe to your half-baked conspiracy like it’s the be-all-end-all.’

‘Right.’

‘You’re too close to it. It’s makin’ you blind; you know the family’s still suspect, huh? Man cries in front of you and you look at him like he’s a baby fuckin’ bird you gotta nurse back to health. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, gettin’ so damn soft. Could be our killer.’ 

‘You think that, let’s bring him in right now,’ spits Roland, fumbling with his cuffs. ‘Come on. The father’s always the one: everyone’s happy, another win for Purple Hays the fuckin’ Superspade.’

‘ _Fuck_ you.’ 

Things might be better if Wayne hit him, but the man just glares at Roland with a constrained sort of rage straddling the territory between intimidating and downright scary. Roland knows he’s crossed a line he can’t uncross. So he knocks back the last of his whiskey with a sneer, slops the half that doesn’t set his throat burning down the front of his shirt, slams the glass on the table on his way out. Hates himself for it. 

Wayne has kicked the door shut behind him before he realises that he’s forgotten the map. Fuck that, he thinks. Fuck it all.

He sits stewing in his own anger for a bit, lets it wash over him before he guns the engine and pulls away from the sidewalk. Decides to hit Shoepick Lane before heading home, just to prove to himself that he’s not totally wrong about the whole thing. About Tom. But that doesn’t mean he’s gone soft.

***

There’s a fistfight taking place on the front lawn when he gets there. 

‘Hey,’ he calls, jumping out of the car sharpish, his shadow cutting through the high beam of his headlights as he approaches the two men struggling on the grass. ‘Hey! What’s goin’ on here?’

A dark figure steps into the light: Lucy Purcell. She snorts as she sees him coming and clutches her coat tighter around her thin frame. ‘They got you comin’ out on noise complaints now, Detective?’ she says with a helping of scorn on the side. ‘Our own personal cop. Great.’ 

The open front door behind her casts the fighting men in a yellow glow, spilling through messed hair and clothes and outlining Tom with his fist raised. A bleeding Dan O’Brien beneath him. Tom squints up at Roland, distracted — and Dan drives a knee right into his stomach. He grunts, crumples, and Dan rolls out from under him and leaps to his feet.

‘Stay down, Tommy,’ he says with a final kick to Tom’s ribs. Brushes the dirt from his torn jacket and flashes Roland a cheap grin. ‘See that? Fuckin’ assault of a guest. Think he broke my nose.’

Roland’s not impressed. ‘Looks like you were holdin’ your own pretty good,’ he says, holding out a hand to help Tom up off the ground. Tom on his hands and knees. ‘Mind explainin’ what y’all’re doin’ bringin’ this shit out onto the street?’

‘Well, officer, things were gettin’ a bit heated so I figured I oughta remove myself from the environment, only for Tom here to follow me out and lay one into me unprovoked. Ain’t that right, Lucy?’

‘You rat fuck,’ Tom spits. Staggers to his feet unaided with his hands clutched to his side. ‘Two of you deserve each other, y’know that?’ 

‘See? Aggressive is what that is. No reasonin’ with him.’

‘Ain’t I allowed to kick vermin outta my own goddamn house? Come here to suck us dry.’

‘In your dreams, buddy.’ 

Tom lunges forward but Roland already has a hand on his shoulder, holding him back. Dan coughs some blood onto the cracked driveway and grins through his reddened teeth. ‘If you just calmed down for a sec, you’d realise Lucy n’ I are tryin’ to what’s best. For the family. Ain’t you entitled to compensation for all the sufferin’ you’ve gone through? Hell, in this country even that mental anguish of yours got a dollar sign on it.’ 

‘Go fuck yourself, Dan.’

The headlights of Roland’s car dip and sputter for the briefest of seconds but Tom swings around and stares like a man possessed. Starts to laugh. Roland lets go of his shirt; without anything holding him up Tom sinks to the ground to laugh some more until he’s practically crying into his bruised hands. 

Lucy takes a half-step forward, looking down at her husband with a torn sort of frustration. ‘Tom,’ she says. ‘Don’t you wanna be able to pay off the funeral? We could do that n’ more. Get outta this shithole.’ 

‘I ain’t payin’ for an empty coffin,’ chokes Tom. ‘Whatever that _thing_ was it weren’t Will, I’m tellin’ you.’ 

A chill goes up Roland’s spine like an electric current. Tom is sincere, wild with the blood tricking from his split lip and cheekbone but with the steady voice of a true believer. Lucy hardens. Sucks on her teeth before turning her back on him in disgust.

‘He ain’t goin’ to be any help,’ Dan says, taking her arm and pulling her close. ‘Come on, Luce. There’s nothin’ else here save a whole lotta bad memories and this crazy cocksucker. Let’s go.’

Lucy twists away from Dan and stalks to her car with her arms folded tight across her chest. Not looking back. Tom stumbles upright and limps to the house towards the lure of loud and sudden music blaring from the hallway. As if he's expecting it - unlike Roland who can’t help but jump at the noise. 

‘Guess he’s all yours, Detective,’ Lucy says, and gets into the car. Roland pushes past Dan and follows the music into the house, all the way to Will’s room.

He pauses on the threshold. The whole room has gone through a radical change since the day of the funeral: there are rows of fairy lights strung across the whole room from door to window, blinking festively down at a series of maps and figurines spread out across the floor. It looks like Tom has rigged together some kind of circuit, LEDs tangling around a series of kids’ alphabet blocks laid out on the carpet. A light for each letter. Chaos.

The car engine guns to life outside but Tom doesn’t move from his spot on the floor. The tape-deck blares something about only the good dying young and the lights above flash in a disorienting rhythm as if synced to the music, but Roland knows that’s impossible.

‘Tom?’ 

‘Shh,’ says Tom. ‘Hey kiddo, you still there?’ 

The bulbs brighten in a single solar flare. Roland clutches his gun, a serious sense of unease wrapping itself like piano wire around his gut. 

‘Sorry you had to hear all that.’ But Tom is grinning as he speaks to the empty room. ‘That’s been a long time comin’ with your Uncle Dan.’

The lights flash again. A confirmation or an electric fault, it’s hard to tell. 

‘Tom. What the fuck is goin’ on?’ says Roland. He can feel the night slipping away from him into something beyond his willingness to understand. ‘Are you talkin’ to —’

The LEDs by the building blocks light up, one by one, unmistakably spelling a single word. _W-I-L-L._

‘Oh fuck no,’ grunts Roland. Maybe Wayne was right: he’s losing his grasp on reality. The case is getting to him. Roland takes a step backwards and nearly trips on a plastic figurine of a multi-headed monster, swears, lurches to the kitchen with the lights pounding white behind his eyes.

‘Detective West,’ says Tom, following him out. ‘Roland. You okay?’

‘Am I dreamin’? Is this some kinda trick?’

‘No. Thought I was losin’ it as well. Thought maybe he was hauntin’ us through the lights or something…so I asked him.’ Tom bounces on his heels, trembling as he grips Roland by the shoulders and says, low and fervent: ‘My boy ain’t dead. He ain’t.’

Roland lets out a weak laugh. He must be going crazy, else why would he even entertain the possibility of believing the man in front of him — a man bleeding, alcoholic, out of his mind with grief. But he wants to.

Wayne would be shaking his head right now, backing the fuck up and calling a psych ward, but Roland just stares at Tom as if the answer might be written somewhere in his beseeching expression.

Then again, he’s a practical sort of guy. 

‘Got a shovel?’ Roland asks. 

Tom wipes the blood from his lip, a hard type of understanding spreading slow and clear across his face as he nods. The first thing resembling hope that Roland has seen from the man this whole time: constrained maybe, battened down but there nonetheless. Tangible in the desperate way his fingers press into Roland’s skin through the fabric of his jacket. 

‘I got two.’ 

He’s well in it now. About to go breaking the law, perched on the edge of it with nowhere to go but down. Into the earth.

‘Well,’ says Roland, and tucks his badge away into his pocket. ‘Reckon we got some diggin’ to do.’


	5. Chapter 5

The hole in the ground takes them most of the night. 

Hours slip away under a slivered moon that barely casts enough light to throw down shadow. It’s all shadow here. Roland has a flashlight but he keeps it smothered under his jacket so as to not draw attention to themselves. Two men, shovels, a fresh grave: wouldn’t exactly take a genius-of-the-year passerby to figure out what they’re up to in the dead of night, but as it is the graveyard is quiet and empty apart from the squelch of dirt and the sound of soil tumbling onto more soil. 

Roland stops to wipe his face and leans on his shovel for a moment, ignores the wind chill on the perspiration soaking his armpits and back as he watches Tom work. He has his shirt open and his sleeves rolled up and every now and then Roland sees the flash of sweat on his sternum, the dark hair thatched below his undershirt. Head ducked and muscles straining with motion. Roland desperately hopes to hell that this isn’t some horrible mistake. 

They keep digging until Roland’s shovel spears into the dirt with an unmistakable metal-hitting-wood _clunk_. Impact jarring all the way up his arm. 

‘Okay, then,’ says Roland. ‘Here we go.’ 

He suddenly feels kinda queasy. Tom brushes the remaining soil away with his bare hands to reveal the glossed sheen of a coffin-lid: Will’s coffin, same as the day they put in the ground save with a fresh dent from Roland’s shovel. Child-sized.

Tom clambers out of the hole and stares down at the unearthed box. 

'You sure about this?’ Roland asks. He can’t blame Tom for getting cold-feet last-minute; the thought of disturbing a week old corpse isn’t exactly getting his motor going right now either. But they’ve come this far. Might as well commit. 

There’s a moment as Tom looks up at the night sky, closed off and pale. ‘Crack her open,’ he finally says. Voice as uneven as the disturbed soil around them as he hands the crowbar to Roland and turns away with a sick shake of his head. 

It takes Roland a few tries — his grip keeps slipping with sweat and there’s barely enough room for him to manoeuvre within the confines of the grave let alone get the right angle to prise open a sealed coffin — but then he catches an edge and the whole thing comes shuddering open.

He’s seen enough corpses in his time to know that a week-old body should be reeking worse than a slaughterhouse drain in the height of summer, yet he doesn’t even have to cover his nose and mouth to look down at the stiff face of Will Purcell. Peering out from the collar of his Sunday suit as if tucked up safe and sound in bed. A horrible parody.

That’s the first thing. But it’s not the only thing.

Roland leans over with the coffin propped open on his shoulder and touches the kid’s neck. It’s unpleasantly cold and waxen — just as cold and waxen as the night that Wayne stumblingly felt for a pulse in the darkness of the cave, without a hint of the bloat or loose skin that Roland had been bracing himself to face. Even more, it’s firm to the touch but strangely pliant. 

‘Oh, what the shit,’ breathes Roland as he fumbles open the boy’s shirt. There’s no Y-incision. No hint of autopsy. The skin looks _wrong._

‘What is it?’ Tom sounds like he’s trying hard not to puke.

‘Don’t look.’ 

There’s nothing Roland can do about the obvious _schwing_ of his pocket knife flipping open. ‘Okay,’ he grunts, steadying himself. Takes a deep lungful of night air and presses the knife down: the skin splits easily under the blade, peeling open not to reveal the gore and glut of human insides but — 

‘Motherfucker,’ Roland hisses. Pulling out handful upon handful of stuffing from the filled body. ‘It’s a fake. Tom. It’s a fuckin’ dummy.’

The stuffing stands out as white as fresh snow in the darkness, now so obviously false as Roland tears the dummy apart until it looks nothing like the no-longer-dead boy. How had they fallen for this?

‘Oh my God,’ Tom is saying over and over. ‘Jesus Christ.’

Roland lets the coffin drop shut over the gutted thing, disgusted at himself and at Wayne at the whole fucking corrupt coroner’s office that tried to bury a living lost kid along with _this_ fucking monstrosity. 

‘Help me out,’ he says, and Tom takes his arm and hauls him out onto the grass and they both lie there panting on their bellies like grounded fish, heaving with horror and questions until Tom breaks into laughter. 

‘Will’s alive,’ he splutters, shaking with the same uncontrolled spasms Roland had felt as the man sobbed against his shirt the day of the funeral. But this is different, wilder. Hopeful. ‘My son’s alive.’ 

And then Roland’s laughing too, choked and disbelieving and filthy. ‘He fuckin’ is.’ 

If anyone were to walk by the graveyard now they’d get the fright of their lives. Roland rolls over and laughs a bit harder, clutching his side and trying hard not to imagine where Will Purcell is right now. If he’s scared. Waiting for them to find him. 

***

They go back to Roland’s apartment after, seeing as he’s not the morbid focus of a whole streetful of nosy do-gooders; he’s a man with a living arrangement chosen for its discretion and no entitled neighbours. Seedy but disinterested. And besides, Tom looks like he hasn’t slept for a week in the house haunted by his son.

It’s a quiet drive home. Hazy. Faint hints of dawn just beginning to break through the cloud cover as they pull up outside and Roland leads Tom up the stairs to his door without turning on the hall lights. He knows they’re trailing dirt and mud up the corridor but he can’t bring himself to care. 

‘Shower’s in there,’ he says, completing the grand tour by throwing a fresh towel into the bathroom. Tom nods, already making to shrug off his dirty flannel and undershirt as he shuts the door behind him. Roland leaves him to it. Pulls off his own soil-caked jeans, shirt and boots and goes to scrub his face and forearms in the kitchen sink, trying not to let the water run cold for Tom. 

There’s still dirt under his fingernails by the time he’s done. Roland doesn’t think he’ll ever lose the grit of grave-earth on his skin but he’s too bone-tired to wait for a shower, instead choosing to slip on a pair of clean pyjama bottoms and an old t-shirt and settle into bed with the lights off. He can’t stop thinking about slicing open Will’s chest, the fake viscera spilling out. Jesus, what if he’d been wrong? 

It’s too late to ignore the tug of sleep on his eyelids but he rolls over and watches the sliver of light that shines out from under the bathroom door, the moving shadow of the man beyond it. The tap spits into the sink. 

Roland closes his eyes.

‘Hey. You got anything clean I can borrow?’ comes Tom’s voice. It’s dark but not dark enough to conceal the man standing at the foot of his bed, towel clutched to his waist and dark hair plastered to his head. Face strangely vulnerable and raw without the moustache. 

Roland blinks awake, sluggish. ‘Yeah, man, that drawer over there. Help yourself.’

He tries to pretend that he’s not looking as Tom gets dressed, a blurred pale shape in the dark facing away from Roland; the line of his legs disappearing into pyjamas, arms and head briefly obscured by a worn t-shirt that Roland knows will read _Keep On Truckin_ in the light of day. Clothes hanging loose on his lankier frame as he towels his hair dry, silent. 

‘Wait,’ Roland says as Tom makes for the door. ‘Just…sit a while?’ 

The mattress dips as Tom finds the end of the bed in the dark and lowers himself down. Roland stares at his hunched back, not sure what he ought to say next. 

There’s a pause. ‘You think we’re gonna find him?’ Tom says into the dark without inflection. 

‘Yeah. I do.’

‘How d’you know that? May not be dead, sure, but he’s sure as hell lost.’

‘And you were talkin’ to him just yesterday,’ Roland points out, rousing some hope to drip-feed into the conversation. ‘Shit, it’s crazy but it’s the biggest help we could have. Ain’t many folks can say that.’ 

‘He said it was like home,’ Tom murmurs. ‘Will. Where he is. Said it’s like home but _not_ — like I know what that means.’

‘I’m workin’ on it. Trust me. There’s more to it I don’t understand but I’m gettin’ there: Hoyt, missin’ kids, the lot. ’

‘Hoyt? Like where Lucy used to work?’

‘That’s the one. They ain’t got something to do with it all, I’ll eat my badge. But there’s not much good any of us can do without a decent night’s sleep.’

Tom lies back on the bed and lets out a sigh that radiates sheer exhaustion like ripples in a pool. Roland listens to the tidal rise and fall of Tom’s chest, keeps his hands to himself, his own breath measured to match as he tries not to think about the implication. Lying here with another man in his bed, the thought of the empty grave dark enough for them to want each other close rather than sleep apart. 

It’s still hours from dawn when Roland wakes with a jolt. Almost reaches for his gun as he hears the animal noises of distress in the dark, imagining the deer lying bleeding and dying on his bedroom floor but it’s only Tom. Twitching in his sleep like a dreaming dog tormented by flies, curled up tight at the base of the bed. 

‘Hey,’ Roland says, uncertain. ‘Tom.’

Tom flinches and lets out a whine. Some nightmare plaguing his sleep; the groans come deep from his belly, raw and upsetting to hear. Roland sits up and shakes him by the shoulder. ‘Tom. Wake up, come on.’

Tom jerks up as if electrified, looking wildly around for a familiar touchstone in the unfamiliar room. Finds one in Roland. ‘Oh,’ he chokes, shaking. ‘What —?’

‘Just a dream, man. You’re okay.’ 

It takes him a second to realise what the words mean, even longer to see Roland’s intention in throwing back the blankets on the other side of the bed with a gesture for him to get in. But the dream is still leaking from the terror in his eyes. He doesn’t fight it. Lets Roland pull him close and settle them face to face under the comfort of the duvet.

‘I dreamt there was a girl. Oh, God.’ Tom shakes his head. ‘I lost her too, Roland, I fuckin’ lost ‘em both and there was nothing we could do to find either one. Just glimpses of ‘em in the trees, that’s all — I couldn’t even see their faces.’

His long fingers cling to Roland’s wrist as if that might make him understand the dream-knowledge. Roland knows nightmares; there’d been plenty of his buddies after ‘Nam that had the same look in their eyes, the hollowed-out despair like sleep was the real enemy to fear. He can only comfort. Try to dispel the shock.

‘It’s okay,’ he mumbles over and over, wraps an arm around Tom and holds him steadily until his breath comes less hard and desperate. ‘It ain’t real.’

He thinks maybe Tom will throw his arm off when he calms down, maybe leap out of bed filled with another type of fear and accusal — but when he does dare to look Tom in the face he sees the other man has drifted back to sleep. Lips half-parted and eyes flickering faintly under bruised lids. There’s no way he can remove his arm without wakening him but it feels a small price to pay for some undisturbed rest, so Roland holds on. Closes his eyes.

***

They would have slept in long and late if not for the phone. It pierces through the early morning stillness with obnoxious vigour, shattering Roland’s fragmented dreams and leaving him groping blindly in the dark for the covers. 

‘Hmm,’ grunts Tom as Roland slides out of bed, rolling into the freshly vacated space. And Roland’s tired, sure, and in a hurry to catch the phone but that doesn’t mean he hadn’t noticed the way Tom had had his forehead butted up against Roland’s back when he first woke up. 

The phone clicks over to answering machine before Roland can stumble his way into the living room. 

_‘Roland, you there? I know it’s early but you gotta pick up,’_ comes the canned voice of Wayne Hays crackling through the speaker. 

Roland stands there a moment, still pissed enough at their last meeting to seriously consider ignoring the call — but he likes to think he’s not so petty a bastard. Not that that’ll stop him from giving Wayne an earful.

_‘What?’_ he grunts, grabbing the mouthpiece from its cradle. ‘Your forget to wind your watch? Callin’ me up at six AM on a fuckin’ Saturday like I ain’t got better things to be doin’, like sleepin’.’

_‘I know, I know, fuck me. Just come over. We got to talk.’_

‘I dunno, man. Must be I’m gettin’ soft.’

 _‘You two can sort out your interpersonal issues at a less pressing time,’_ says Amelia Reardon down the phone line, frostily. Roland nearly drops the receiver. _‘We’ll explain later.’_

‘Listen lady, I’m over the moon the two of you have finally gotten to know each other biblically, but I ain’t interested in whatever ménage à trois you got planned out,’ he says. ‘Sorry to disappoint.

_‘Just come over,’_ she says, and actually hangs up on him. 

‘Unbelievable.’ He says this to no one in particular. 

Roland would like to think he’s not so impressionable as to drop everything and drive across town at the beck and call of Wayne and his new paramour, but that’s exactly what he finds himself doing.

Tom’s already awake and rooting through his ruined clothes from the night before when Roland re-enters the bedroom. 

‘I gotta go,’ Roland explains, plonking himself down on the bed to pull on his jeans and boots. ‘You can stay if you want, get more sleep. Got food in the fridge.’

‘Think I better get home,’ says Tom, not looking up until Roland has fastened the last button on his shirt. ‘Been too long gone as it is.’

‘I can drop you off.’ 

Roland gets up and heads to his dresser, chucks him a pair of corded slacks that haven’t seen the light of day for years, along with a belt that falls heavily onto the floor. Tom stoops and picks it up. 

_‘Champion Bull Rider 1968, Fort Worth, Texas,’_ he reads, turning the engraved buckle over in his hands. ‘You win this?’ 

Roland shrugs. ‘Did a bit of the rodeo circuit ‘fore I got drafted. Guess I should be grateful to have got out in one piece — one of my buddies got himself thrown on purpose just to fail his physical, hasn’t walked a step since.’

‘Shit.’ Tom has stripped down to his boxers and is hastily pulling on the pants, cinching the material tight at his hips. ‘Will was born by then. Married father at nineteen, gave me a free fuckin’ pass. Can’t help thinkin’ maybe things would’ve been better for everyone if I’d gone.’

‘You’d have a good chance at bein’ dead, for a start.’

‘Yeah. Think Lucy’d get a kick outta bein’ a widow.’ 

‘Best not to give her the satisfaction,’ says Roland. Tom blinks back surprise for a moment, ruefully rubs a hand over his unshaven jaw as he follows Roland out of the apartment. It’s still dark out; sky just about fading to lightness at the edges like a washed out print embellished with a few collared doves cooing mournfully in the treetops above.

He doesn’t expect anyone to be out on the roads this early but as they pull into West Finger his headlights hit the reflectors of two bikes up ahead: two kids, pedalling hard like their lives depend on it. Roland pulls up alongside and winds down his window. 

‘Hey, assholes,’ he says amicably.’ Ain’t you heard there’s a curfew goin’ on?’

The boy furthest away has his hood up covering his head, but Roland gets a good look at the one closest that’s sporting a haircut like his head got caught in a lawnmower. Kids these days, he reflects: when they’re not growing their hair out to look like Freddy Burns and his Black Sabbath gang, they’re hell-bent on shaving it all off. No understanding it.

‘Mouthbreather,’ says the skinhead, and it’s hard to tell with prepubescence and all but Roland could swear the kid is actually a _girl_ just as the bikers swerve off the road and disappear down a worn track among the long grass, way before he can think of an age-appropriate cutting retort.

‘You hear that?’ grunts Roland, peering back over his shoulder. ‘Little punks actin’ like those rules ain’t in place to keep _them_ safe.’

‘Don’t think you can lecture about law-breakin’ with half the cemetery on your upholstery,’ Tom says, wry-faced and yawning. 

It’s an inarguable point so Roland shuts up and swings down Shoepick Lane. The house is dark but the porch light swells to brightness at their approach, a buoy signalling safe harbour in an ocean of unwelcoming ghost houses. 

‘Try learnin’ more about where he is, if you get talkin’ to Will,’ Roland says as Tom stumbles out of the car. ‘Tell him we’re comin’.’

Tom touches the bonnet once in confirmation and goes up to the house without looking back. Roland wants to follow him inside, see the bizarre mystery for himself all over again but he reverses out of the drive instead, headlights off, and continues on his way to Wayne’s.

All he knows is someone inside the office helped with the cover-up and Wayne found the body. _Shit shit shit._ Roland would like to think he knows Wayne better than that but he still checks the service weapon loaded on his hip before knocking on the door to Wayne’s one-bedroom house. 

‘Get in,’ is the first thing out of Wayne’s mouth when he yanks open the door, no apology, no _thanks for letting me ruin your day off_ , nothing. 

‘Nice to see you too.’ Roland steps inside. 

Wayne’s in his undershirt, creased pants, a kind of twitchy look in his eye that doesn’t put Roland at ease. Amelia is sitting on the couch, unrumpled and calm but barefaced — she stayed the night, all right, if Wayne’s comfortable state of undress is anything to go by.

‘Morning,’ she says, and takes a cool sip on her glass of orange juice.

There’s a bunch of handwritten notes spread out on the table before her, and under those in all its crumpled glory is Roland’s annotated map. He can’t see too well but it looks like someone’s taken a red marker and gone to town with some highlighting of their own.

‘Well this looks cozy,’ says Roland, gesturing to the couch and the messy table. ‘Y’all plannin’ your honeymoon? Personally I’d choose to go out of state, but hell, you can do what you like.’

‘Can we park the bullshit, man? I gotta tell you something.’

Wayne sounds pretty serious so Roland just cocks his head to one side despite his ruffled pride, quirks an eyebrow as if to say _Well, what?_

Wayne crosses to the couch, sits by Amelia, who twines their fingers together and squeezes encouragingly. ‘I, uh, saw it,’ he says, and Roland has no idea what he’s on about. ‘It’s fuckin’ real.’

‘ _What’s_ real?’

Amelia interjects, school-teacherly. ’How about you start at the beginning?’

‘Yeah. Okay.’ Wayne runs a hand over his hair, swallows. ‘Couldn’t stop thinkin’ bout what you said last night, cracked as it was, figured it wouldn’t do any harm to check out the rest of these.’ He taps Roland’s inked marks on the map. 

Roland makes a small irritated noise in his throat, arms tightly crossed over his chest but doesn’t say anything else. Waits.

‘I know, I know, I’m a hypocritical dick. But just listen,’ Wayne says. ‘So I might’ve been a kinda loaded, out in the middle of the night stumblin’ around like a class-A asshole — but I found ‘em. Tracks. Nothing like I ever seen before, no hog, no deer, no fuckin’ bear leaves prints like that. So I set to huntin’.’

‘…Okay.’

‘Stupid of me, goin’ out there without tellin’ anyone where I was. Tracked it all the way to this hollow tree, big hole at the roots leading in like a den…jungle all over again. Củ Chi. Nearly couldn’t make myself go in. But I did.’ 

Wayne’s grip around Amelia’s hand looks painfully tight but she doesn’t say anything, just leans close and nods encouragement. 

‘Wasn’t like anything I ever saw before. Came out the other side, same woods, same fuckin’ tree, but there was something changed about it. Cold. Rotten sort of smell, air cold enough to hurt, as if everything had somehow up and died from one second to the next.’

‘Like here but… _not,_ ’ Roland interrupts, slowly piecing together two pieces of some unimaginable puzzle.

Wayne nods. ‘Exactly. But that wasn’t all — I was just gettin’ my bearings, tryin’ not to lose my fuckin’ head when I saw _it._ Just like Woodard said.’ 

‘You tellin’ me you saw a man without a face?’

‘No. That thing was a _monster_.’

There’s a pause as Roland absorbs this, along with the true fear hidden behind Wayne’s matter-of-fact words, the sheen of sweat shinning starkly on his dark skin. He’s telling the truth. Scared shitless. Which is enough to make Roland deeply, deeply uncomfortable: Purple Hays is implacable. Steady as granite. A mean hunter and a trained killer. 

And here he is, visibly rattled.

Amelia rubs Wayne’s shoulder, a comforting motion that speaks of a deeper intimacy than the two want to display. 

‘Don’t know how I got outta there without it spottin’ me, man, I really don’t,’ continues Wayne. ‘But somehow I got back through, ran for my fuckin’ life. ’

Roland’s pacing now, hands on his hips. Wayne, Woodard, the missing girl’s sister, all spotting this thing in Hoyt’s back yard? Even thinking the word _coincidence_ is an insult. He nearly trips over Wayne’s jacket: it sits abandoned on the wooden floor, matching pants a little ways off as if Wayne shed them the moment he stepped in the door. There’s a weird, thick gunk smeared onto both items of clothing, and since Wayne didn’t mention anything about crawling his way through a vat of snot there’s only one place the stuff could have come from.

‘I’ve seen this shit before,’ Roland says, toeing Wayne’s jacket with disgust. ‘That deer, remember? Same stuff.’ 

‘It’s a predator.’ There’s a certainty in Wayne’s voice, one hunter recognising another. ‘It lives _there_ but it needs meat…Deer. Kids, maybe.’ 

Amelia shifts slightly. ‘You think it might’ve gotten—?’

The awful image of a monster preying on little children stops her dead in her tracks. But Roland knows something they don’t; he can’t believe he was so caught up in Wayne’s dramatic story that he nearly forgot his own eventful night’s work. His own shattering discovery.

‘Will Purcell ain’t dead, by the way,’ he says and, ignoring Amelia’s slack look of surprise and the high velocity drop of Wayne’s jaw, launches into a tale of light grave-desecration and fake corpses — by the end of which the two of them look like stuffed dummies themselves.

‘I don’t…How could we have missed that?’ asks Wayne, wide-eyed and close to horrified.

‘Those FBI boys came down awful fast, don’t you think? Whole outfit could be crooked.’

‘Meaning you can’t tell anyone about this,’ Amelia says slowly. ‘Seeing as it’s in their best interests that boy doesn’t get found. They just might finish the job.’

This does a good job of silencing the room.

‘You got a dark turn of mind,’ Roland mutters, impressed.

‘You only learning now that police can’t be trusted?’ she asks, sweet as sugarcane but dead serious behind the smile. Wayne ignores her playful nudge; he’s got that stony thinking expression clouding over his eyes, the one that appears whenever he’s intent on untangling his own crisscrossed line of enquiry. 

‘I thought maybe those dolls were put there deliberate, to taunt us,’ he ruminates. ‘But maybe they were there to make us think it was something it wasn’t. Confuse the scene.’ 

Roland picks at the grave-dirt under his fingernails, thinking of how quickly Diller and Bowen had jumped straight to cults, paedophile rings, and pagan signalling during the initial investigation instead of leaning too hard on Patty Faber (a dear good woman and maker of creepy dolls). ‘Well, they oughta get a commendation for doin’ just that,’ he mutters. ‘So, either it’s us or it’s someone influential. Someone with enough clout to get the G.A. hoppin’ to attention with a whole posse of stooges and a bent coroner.’ 

There’s an inevitability to it now. Wayne looks up at him with dark understanding and Amelia picks up the map, runs a finger over the circled spot where HOYT ENERGY lies unexplored and uninterrupted. 

But Roland straightens his jacket and flashes an unconvincing grin. ‘There’s someone we got to talk to first,’ he says, and Wayne’s face drops — as if he’d rather be chased through the woods by a faceless monster than talk to that particular woman for another second longer. ‘Gotta have a chat about the chicken line.’ 

***

After a brief detour where upon they drop Amelia off at the library to research Hoyt Energy, predatory bipeds, and anything else she can get her hands on, Wayne and Roland find themselves parked outside a dire insult to the name of affordable accommodation — _shithole_ being a generous term to describe this particular motel. They sit and wait a while, watching the foot traffic around the rust and water stained building until the distinctive figure of Dan O’Brien exits one of the rooms and gets into Lucy Purcell’s car. Leaving them free to knock on the peeling paper-thin door without interruption. 

‘Forget your wallet?’ says Lucy, opening the door and swinging it shut in the brief second it takes her to recognise the men on her doorstep — but Roland already has his foot jammed in between the frame and the door. 

‘We just want a few words, Mrs. Purcell,’ Wayne says, averting his eyes from the generous view of swinging tits through her half-open robe. ‘Won’t take long.’

‘Y’all waited until Dan left? Well, I’ll take you one at a time or both together, I don’t mind,’ she says with a leer. Her sharp-tongued ease is a front though, set to hide the jitter of her frame that a worldly observer might assume has something to do with the baggie of crystalline powder lying on the bed behind her. 

Roland’s foot is just about crushed inside his boot by the time she figures shutting them out isn’t going to work.

‘Fuckin’ perverts.’ Sour and on edge but she lets them past her into the room. It’s depressingly ugly; patterned duvets that look stiff from lack of cleaning, a dirty glass table smeared with residue and pocked with burn-marks, a brown water stain seeping down from the ceiling to the wall. Roland perches on the edge of an overstuffed armchair and tries to ignore the hypodermic needle lying on the carpet at his feet. 

‘Appreciate it, ma’am,’ he says. Wayne coughs and Roland can’t blame him: it’s like sitting in a localised cloud of cheap tobacco and burnt meth. ‘You talk to us, you don’t gotta see us again.’ 

‘Won’t _that_ be the day. You tell Tom I ain’t comin’ back, right? You can tell him I’m sorry if it helps, whatever you want.’

‘We ain’t here about that.’

‘Well, shit.’ She flops down on the bed and pushes her tangled hair behind her ears, glares. ‘What’s this about then?’

Wayne unfolds his notebook and says, ‘Understand you used to work the chicken line up at Hoyt’s, that true?’

‘Yeah. Just for a year though after Will was born.’ Lucy glances between Roland and Wayne, sucking on her lower lip with a frown. ‘I fuckin’ hate chickens, but dead ones ain’t too bad.’

‘Tom was workin’ back in Texas then?’ Roland asks, neutral. Professional.

‘Sure. Run away the first chance he got,’ she says. ‘Pay was good but he had to spend the whole time weldin’ offshore. I told him to stay out. Finish the job.’

‘That’s when you got the position at Hoyt’s.’

‘I didn’t want to stay home. Me and the baby, no man, no family…so what if there was a paycheck every month? Still had to scrape by. You think I should’ve put my life on hold, waitin’ till my husband got home? Like every fuckin’ other woman? Least most of theirs didn’t come back.’

Roland swallows a vicious answer. Imagines Tom dead overseas — no shitty marriage, no dead child, no nothing — and feels his heart drop into his boots. ‘Some of those women from Davis Junction?’ he says, a twinge of satisfaction as Lucy flinches. ‘They said it weren’t just chicken some of y’all were workin’ on.’

‘Fuck you,’ Lucy spits. ‘Those bitches, talkin’ like they didn’t need the money too. And it wasn’t anything like you’re imaginin’, for the record. It was _legitimate._ ’ 

‘What does that mean, legitimate?’ Wayne leans forward, pen poised. 

‘ _This_ here, what y’all are doin’? It ain’t legal. We had to sign all kinds of shit, non-disclosure: means I can’t talk about any of it.’

‘Let us worry about that.’

‘Whatever. Been long enough as it is.’ Lucy fumbles in her robe and pulls out a cigarette, lights up and lets a slow grin sharpen her face. ‘And besides. Fuck that guy.’ 

Roland remembers the uneasy feeling of being stuck in a room with the current head of security breathing down his neck, represses a shudder. ‘Harris James?’

‘That’s the one. He liked to watch.’ 

Wayne’s losing patience with this whole dance. ‘Watch what?’ 

‘Well, Detective,’ Lucy says, toying with the end of her dressing gown. ‘They’d get a bunch of us women from the chicken line, ten maybe, or twelve, to come down to the lab after hours. Help out with some tests. We’d all get naked, get drugged up, get into these big tanks and float around in the dark. Felt like bein’ out to sea and trapped in one spot all at the same time. Like bein’ coloured in outside the lines.’

‘What does that have to do with electricity?’

‘I dunno. They spent the whole thing measurin’ God knows what, while we all tripped out. Sensory deprivation, I think they called it. Some of the others couldn’t take it, but hell, I was gettin’ paid good money and the drugs were high-end so I stuck it out.’ 

Wayne shoots Roland a questioning look but he can’t make head or tail of the story either, just knows that it sounds suspect as shit. And that Lucy picked up a hell of a drug habit _somewhere_ along the line if the paraphernalia scattered across the motel room is anything to go by. He thinks back to Davis Junction, the women’s scared and unrevealing faces, about what one lady had whispered in a hushed voice just as they were making to leave. 

‘You, uh…You miscarry around that time by any chance, Mrs Purcell?’ 

Lucy’s demeanour changes at once: she leaps up and glares down at Roland, arms folded tight and defensive across her chest. ‘Go on,’ she spits, savage. ‘You been wantin’ to call me slut to my face since day one, huh? Fuck you and your fuckin’ questions.’

‘Ain’t tryin’ to insult you, ma’am,’ Roland says, hands up. ‘Just some ladies said they miscarried after their time at Hoyt’s is all. Was wonderin’ if you maybe experienced something similar.’ 

She looks ready to slap him. ‘Yeah. I slept around, so _what._ You fuckin’ try it, bein’ married to…’ Her cigarette is trembling ash all over the carpet but she doesn’t seem to notice. ‘Try bein’ faithful when the one person that’s meant to want you can’t so much as get it up. Try it, then you can sit there and call me a whore.’ 

‘You sayin’ you got pregnant outside of your marriage cause your husband’s a queer?’ asks Wayne bluntly. 

The air in the room is suddenly very stifling. Roland grips the material of his jeans at the knees, keeps his reaction on the level, watches as some of the anger leaks from Lucy’s expression and she nods, darting her head back to avoid their eyes. 

‘Some cunt knocked me up. Didn’t tell nobody in case they dropped me from the experiment, cut the drugs.’ She swipes at her running makeup with the back of a hand. ‘I lost it, okay? The baby. That what you bastards want to hear?’ 

Roland drops his gaze. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Well I ain’t. Will was a mistake: only reason I got hitched in the first place. And besides, what would I’ve told Tom?’ 

It’s a question that Wayne ignores as he clicks his pen a few times, distant thoughts elsewhere. ‘So Hoyt ain’t just dealin’ in chickens and clean energy, that what you’re tellin’ us?’ he muses. ‘Sounds like they got a bunch of weird shit on the side.’ 

Lucy might as well be sucking on a lemon her expression is so bitter. ‘I don’t know what they’re into these days. But yeah. That lab’s a freakshow.’ 

Wayne’s expression is steady but he turns to look at Roland with something close to triumph; the crooked roots tangling around the whole case are starting to lead in the same direction, toward the same fenced off power plant with a monster lurking around the perimeter. 

‘Don’t tell him,’ Lucy says, gaze fixed on Roland as they make to go, a desperation seeping into her voice. She grips her own arm so hard it looks set to bruise, red fingerprints harsh on her blotchy skin. ‘Don’t tell Tom what I told you, about the baby. None of it.’

Roland pauses at the door. He doesn’t think he could watch more of Tom’s misery, let alone contribute to it in the name of truth, so he nods, lets her face settle into relief. ‘Ain’t ours to tell,’ he says. ‘Along with other things.’

‘You’re all set on protectin’ him from the big bad world, huh, Detective? Bit late for that.’ She laughs a dead-child-mother’s laugh, spits the cigarette filter into the street. ‘World’s got it out for faggots and whores and them that run with ‘em. You go back to jackin’ off to dead children, leave us the fuck alone.’

He could tell her about Will. That Tom was right. But he’s got that hard anger settling heavy and armour-like against his skin and he doesn’t think he could say it like it’s real if he tried. So he just gives her a dark flat look and follows Wayne to the car, and by the time he glances back over his shoulder she’s already shut the door. Faint movement at the curtain, the light going out. 

If only he could feel sorry for her — but it feels like he’s used up most of his empathy on a different Purcell.

***

‘It’s like Star Trek, man,’ says Wayne as they drive the backroad back to Fayetteville and Amelia, rain running down the windscreen but not hard enough to dampen his jubilant mood. The road wet and flooding before them.

Roland contemplates this statement and frowns. ‘I don’t think it is.’

‘Listen.’ Wayne turns in his seat, years of being a science-fiction nerd coming out in force . ‘There’s this episode where they get caught in an ion storm, right? Try to transport back to the ship and end up in a parallel universe — a mirror universe.’

‘…Okay. Sounds real scientific.’

‘What I’m sayin’ is, where I went— where it lives — that was some kind of a mirror universe. Same but different. And if Will’s there we got to figure out a way to get back, yeah?’ Roland concedes this point with a shrug. ‘It’s all about the energy. Seems to me you harness enough you could break through to any universe you wanted to.’

The wipers slide back and forth, back and forth as Roland tries to remember his high school science class. ‘ _If_ you could get enough,’ he says. ‘Hoyt’s big, but they ain’t exactly reinventin’ the atom bomb. Think we’d know if we had our own Three Mile Island and besides, there’s already a plant in Russellville.’

‘So maybe it’s not nuclear. But it _is_ something.’

There’s a thick pause as this charming thought fills the car with possibility. Roland fiddles with the wipers, turns them up to the max.

‘Seems like everyone involved in this shit’s got secrets,’ Wayne says after a long stretch of waterlogged fields and rain-slicked barns. Without much edge but it still feels pointed. ‘Accordin’ to her those two were fucked up long ‘fore any of this went down.’

‘You might wanna take whatever comes out of that woman’s mouth with a pinch of salt.’

‘You don’t think he’s a queer?’

Roland grips onto the wheel a bit harder, bites his tongue. It’s a casual question but it makes him want to pull the car to a halt and walk out into the rain without looking back. ‘None of my business,’ he grunts, imaging a world where he doesn’t care about the answer. Where it doesn’t mean anything.

‘Sure, normally I wouldn’t wanna know,’ shrugs Wayne. ‘But when it ain’t legal, it is our business.’

‘You know what else used to be illegal? Seein’ as you grew up not that far away from Little Rock when it all went down.’ His tone is too hard, too mean; just when they’re finally not at each others’ throats he has to go and fuck it up all over again.

‘Fuck off, those ain’t in anywhere near the same.’ Wayne bristles. ‘You don’t know shit about that.’

‘Don’t I?’ Roland asks. They always get to bickering after a while, friendly ragging that’s all bark, no bite — but this has a sharp double-edge that could cut either one of them.

‘Yeah. You don’t,’ Wayne says. ‘We ain’t even talkin’ politics, man, why d’you have to be such an argumentative asshole?’ 

‘Only when you’re bein’ a contrary sumbitch —’

‘Shut _up.’_

‘You always gotta be right, don’t you?’

‘I said shut up!’ Wayne’s looking past him out the window, at the upcoming stretch of street outside his house. _‘Look.’_

There’s a row of sleek black cars parked on the sidewalk, impervious to the rain and down-market neighbourhood. Standing out like undertakers at a country dance among the rest of the battered and practical cars on the street, clean and obviously new. Moneyed. Roland slows down and idles at the end of the road, peering out at the mysterious convoy.

‘You expectin’ anyone?’ he murmurs. Wayne shakes his head. 

They’re still sizing up the blank car windows with silent question when one of the doors slides open. A black-suited man gets out. Looks straight at them down the street and then to the open car, in clear instruction rather than invitation. 

‘Oh fuck,’ Roland says, blanching at the prospect. ‘If I’m readin’ this right, I think you’ll be able to talk Star Trek with the big man himself. That’s Hoyt’s limo.’

Wayne settles a hand on the door and fixes Roland with silent stare, steely resolve written across his features.

‘Best not keep him waiting, then.’


	6. Chapter 6

It’s all so cloak and dagger Roland feels he ought to laugh, but somehow he can’t quite dredge up the feeling while trapped in the back of limo with the richest man in Northwest Arkansas. Hoyt isn’t what he expected: no suit, no tie. A millionaire in a battered hunting vest and worn Levis, weatherbeaten and canny-eyed. A big game man. Sizing them up where they sit, bedraggled from the rain and waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

‘Detective Hays, Detective West,’ Hoyt finally rasps, as if they’ve deigned to grace him with their presence at a work function, not a clandestine meeting in a car headed God knows where. ‘It’s good to meet you gentlemen in the flesh.’

‘Mr. Hoyt,’ Wayne says, deferential. ‘How d’you do?’

Hoyt unscrews a half-bottle of Jameson, takes a ruminative sip without removing his eyes from Wayne’s face. ‘I like to think we’re all seekin’ the same thing, Detective,’ he says. ‘Clarification. Perhaps we can help each other out.’ 

Roland frowns. 'And what’s it we’re seekin’, sir?’

‘Don’t do that.’ Hoyt barely changes his tone but he radiates irritated command. ‘I know you boys have been real busy with this whole missin’ kid affair, pokin’ around. So don’t waste my time tryin’ to get my measure. You ask, I’ll give it to you.’

‘Hard to see how an ongoin’ police investigation is pertinent to your line of work,’ Wayne says.

‘And it’s hard to see how my line of work is pertinent to your ongoin’ police investigation, yet here we are.’ 

‘You lookin’ to lodge a complaint?’

‘Oh, son, I wouldn’t need to go through a middleman if I took to feelin’ disgruntled. But who’s sayin’ this ain’t a friendly chat?’

Roland feels a chill run up his spine that has nothing to do with his rain-soaked jacket, but he isn’t about to be cowed by a two-bit huntsman with a flare for the dramatic. 'Well, apart from the nicely curated atmosphere of intrigue, I believe the standard practice for a friendly chat is for it to be _friendly._ Neutral territory, perhaps.’

‘What an insidious picture you’re paintin’, Mr. West,’ Hoyt chuckles. ‘We can get out and walk if you’d prefer, thought y’all might prefer to stay dry is all.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ interrupts Wayne. ‘Cut to the chase and we’ll get outta your hair, rain or no rain.’

The car bumps down the uneven dirt roads, tinted windows showing the same unfamiliar view of grey trees and hedgerows. Hoyt sighs regretfully and takes another swig. 'Ah, well, that’s the thing,’ he grunts. ‘You’ve been all up in my hair, so to speak, durin’ this whole unfortunate business.’

‘It’s a small town, sir. We’re exhaustin’ every possible outcome.’ 

‘Please. Let’s see: Detective West here comes pokin’ around my offices before y’all even found a body. Then I get a phone call sayin’ him and an unknown woman were goin’ around talkin’ to a whole range of my ex-employees, practically harassin’ them in their own homes. And this woman, _Amelia Reardon_ I believe? Why, she isn’t even employed by the State Police Department.’ 

Roland feels Wayne stiffen beside him at the mention of Amelia’s name, prays he won’t rise to the deliberate bait.

‘And then, most recently, we got hours of footage of Detective Hays pokin’ round the perimeter of my property in the middle of the damn night. Which leads me to ask, what kind of outfit you folks think you’re runnin’ down at Major Crimes? Don’t seem official what you boys are doin’.’

_Fuck._ Hoyt’s got a great deal more leverage than Roland figured possible, especially when they’ve got the bastard in their sights — but they haven’t showed him their cards. Hoyt suspects, but he can’t know what they know. 

‘Like my partner said, sir,’ Roland says. Playing dumb. ‘You want to make a complaint, you go right ahead.’ 

A flicker of disappointment crosses Hoyt’s leathery face, but it’s gone in a flash. Replaced by a hard calculating stare. ‘You didn’t see action, did you Mr. West?’ he says. It’s barely a question. ‘There’s some things a man comes to know, about parley, about respectin’ the opposite side, that can only come from experiencin’ combat first hand. Perhaps Mr. Hays here can better understand.’ 

Roland doesn’t flinch. It’s a jibe he’s heard before but behind the emasculating bullshit is a clear message: _I know. I know everything there is to know about you._ The implication sends a spike of fear straight to his gut and he drops his eyes from Hoyt’s dispassionate gaze, tries to tell himself the only thing Hoyt knows are the details in his file. That’s all. Just shit from his file. 

‘You sayin’ we’re on opposite sides, sir?’ Wayne says coolly. ‘Since we’re discussin’ terms.’ 

‘I just want to know what y’all think you’re doin’, targetin’ my business when there’s a child-killer to be found. You suspect _me?_ Call me in! Do things official. Act like you got the balls to come at it head on, if that’s what you think.’ 

‘Nobody’s pointin’ fingers.’ 

‘Then I’d appreciate you leavin’ me and my employees alone. It’d be a shame if the case were to come to a premature conclusion.’

‘You’re a huntin’ man, Mr. Hoyt,’ Wayne says like he’s the king of polite conversation starters, like they’re cosied up with champagne flutes playing billiards. ‘So am I. So you understand what it’s like havin’ something in your sights, that you don’t just give up at the first petty threat that comes your way.’

‘I’d expect nothing less from a good soldier.’

Wayne spreads his hands, apologetic, hiding the hard line under his words. ‘A man’s gotta do his job, Mr. Hoyt. In this universe at least.’ 

A gleam enters Hoyt’s pale eye. ‘Indeed.’ 

Roland’s severely uncomfortable where this is going. He glances out the window, sees that they’re back to passing fenced houses and yards. Conversation coming to a close. And neither of them dead and buried in an unmarked grave — yet. 

‘A man with nothing to hide don’t have anything to fear from us. So, until justice is served for Will Purcell, me and Roland’ll be doing whatever it takes to get to the bottom of this obfuscated bullshit.’

Hoyt licks his lips, nods. Taps the roof with a hand. ‘Well, gentlemen. I pray you’ll find that boy’s killer; I’m sure the General Attorney will give you plenty of time, what with the elections comin’ up so soon.’

The car glides to a halt. They’re back on Wayne’s street as if no time has passed, no threats given or received. Rain barely spitting. Except there’s a deep unease pulling at Roland that he can’t ignore: this can’t be it. Hoyt has the look of a card shark with one last trick up his sleeve, a barely suppressed enjoyment dancing behind his cold expression. He’s the kind that hunts for sport, not for necessity. 

‘Here we are,’ Hoyt says. ‘Thank you for the company, Detectives — oh, tell Mr. Purcell I ain’t pressin’ charges, would you? If you see him.'

Roland doesn’t want to spend another second in the man’s presence but the words draw him up short. ‘What?'

Hoyt turns and watches as a man gets out of one of the cars idling on the sidewalk, opens the back door and hauls a figure out onto the wet tarmac. They’re too far to see properly but Roland knows deep in his marrow that it’s Tom as the shape hits the ground. Fear rising hot and harsh in his chest.

Hoyt raises an eyebrow. ‘Don’t you know?’ he says. ‘Mr. Purcell broke into my house this morning. Seemed to be under the impression that I was somehow involved in his child’s unfortunate death…leaves me to wonder where he got that idea?’ 

Wayne shakes his head. ‘Man’s troubled,’ he says. ‘Besides, we ain’t at liberty to share details of ongoin’ cases with the public. As already stated.’

‘That your take, Detective?’ asks Hoyt, looking straight at Roland. ‘Mr. Purcell’s just a troubled man? No threat to my person or property?’

There’s a lump in Roland’s throat. ‘Yeah. That’s right.’ 

The chauffeur comes around and opens the door, letting in a disorienting glare of wet pavement and grey sky. Wayne nods to Hoyt and climbs out of the car. Roland makes to follow but Hoyt puts a hand on his arm with a surprisingly sharp motion, like a snake striking. Uncoiled.

‘The suicide rate among bereaved parents is distressingly high,’ he comments, voice low and conversational. ‘Just another sad, alcoholic statistic waitin’ to happen — but what would you care?’

Roland sits back in his seat. This is it: the bite. He has a horrible sneaking suspicion that someone had been watching him leave his apartment that morning with Tom in tow, some lackey of Hoyt’s. _Shit._

The threat hangs heavy and blunt in the air between them, a guillotine waiting to drop.

‘What’s it you want, huh?’ he grunts, trying to keep his tone even and disinterested. Can’t quite manage it. 

A smile spreads across Hoyt’s harsh face. Softening nothing. ‘I could tell you’d be a sight more reasonable than your partner,’ he says, leaning in so Roland can see his bared teeth. ‘You have ambitions. Why, I can see you makin’ Lieutenant if you play your cards right.’

Roland swallows. ‘That’s a pretty picture but I don’t—’

‘I prefer the carrot to the stick, Mr. West. I’m not an unreasonable man. Just need you to do a small favour for me in the meantime, nothing outside your job description.’

His hands itch with the urge to wrap themselves around Hoyt’s throat, but he restrains himself, toys with his ring instead. Glances out the window at Tom still on his hands and knees in the street — no telling if he’s badly hurt or not. No telling what Hoyt is capable of; if it’s all just bluster.

‘Which would entail…?’

‘Just in the course of your investigative duties, if you happen to come across a certain ten-year-old girl I’d appreciate it if you give me a call. That’s all. Keep an eye out for any lost-lookin’ children.’

‘We talkin’ missing persons?’

Hoyt smiles some more, shakes his head. ‘I’d hate to bother the police with such a trivial family matter.’ 

This sounds so fucking untrue it’s almost an insult. But Roland just grits his teeth and smiles back grimly, letting Hoyt think he has him where he wants him. ‘Consider it done.’

Hoyt holds out his hand. Roland shakes, hating himself the whole while, tells himself he’s got no choice but to make a deal with the devil. For his own sake. For Tom’s sake. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t derive great satisfaction from slamming the car door behind him. 

Hoyt, like the bastard he is, winds the window down for one last remark.

‘Oh, Detective?’ Hoyt calls to Roland’s retreating back. ‘This girl you’re on the lookout for? She might not look like a girl, so you know. Got a shaved head.’ 

And with this the convoy of cars pull away from the street and drive away, leaving Roland and Wayne alone with Tom Purcell slumped at their feet. Wayne props his hands on his hips and spits after them, expression as dark and stormy as the clouds above.

‘What the fuck did he want?’

Roland is awash with conflicting emotions. He wants to tell Wayne everything: the request, the awfully familiar missing girl, the bribe, the threat to Tom’s life — but that would mean admitting that he has an exploitable weakness. _Weaknesses._

‘Nothin’,’ he mumbles. ‘Just more bullshit about droppin’ the case.’

Tom lets out a groan. 

Roland’s at his side in an instant, alarmed to see how sluggish and clumsy his movement is, how rumpled his hair and shirt are — but there’s no visible injuries on his skin apart from the scabbed cuts and bruises from his fight with Dan the night before. ‘Hhgh,’ Tom grunts, stringing spittle onto the ground as he tries and fails to sit upright.

‘Whoa, Tom,’ say Roland, putting a steadying hand on his back. The man’s eyes are wide and unfocused; he doesn’t seem to recognise Roland but nevertheless he lets him run his hands across his forehead and hair in search for signs of head injury. Nothing. Then Tom lurches forward to retch onto the pavement and a bruised mark peaks out from his collar, livid and purple on his neck. A needle puncture. 

‘They fuckin’ drug him?’ asks Wayne, grimly taking in the evidence to the affirmative.

‘Help me get him out of the street,’ says Roland. Between them they manage to haul Tom the short distance to Wayne’s front door without much difficulty — he weighs little, as if grief has hollowed him out and left nothing but a series of bones and angles held together by Roland’s old clothes. 

Tom slumps his head onto Roland’s shoulder as Wayne fumbles with his keys. ‘I don’t—’ he mumbles, stubble rasping against Roland’s skin. ‘I don’t feel…right.’ 

‘Hey,’ Roland says hoarsely. ‘You’re goin’ to be okay. Hang on.’ There’s a lick of hair stuck to Tom’s forehead with sweat. Roland waits until they’ve safely deposited him on the couch to smooth it back, a brief careful motion that he manages to block from Wayne’s sight. Tom buries his face in the cushions.

‘Shit. This ain’t good.’ Wayne paces back and forth, wearing out the same stretch of floorboard Roland had been abusing that morning. 

‘You think?’ snaps Roland. 

‘Hoyt got our number, man. I don’t like it. How’s that smug bastard know so much anyway? Not like we’ve been spellin’ out our plans through semaphore, askin’ to be noticed — and how did Purcell here get it into his head to break into Hoyt’s in the first place?’

Roland runs a hand through his hair, winces. ‘Think that might be my fault.’

‘How d’you reckon that.’

‘I might’ve mentioned Hoyt…that he was a suspect. Look, it weren’t exactly deliberate, it just came up. Okay?’

‘Fuck’s sake, Roland. You deputise him when I wasn’t lookin’? Don’t see why else you’d be sharin’ details of a live case with an involved party — ‘specially one that ain’t exactly gonna park that info on the back burner.’

‘I said it was a mistake.’ It’s galling, being reprimanded from Wayne like this when Tom’s still fucked up and shaking like a wind-blown leaf on the couch. ‘Not like you ain’t gabbin’ with schoolteach every chance you get.’

Wayne’s eyes go wide. ‘Oh shit,’ he says. ‘I gotta go find Amelia, see if she’s okay.’ He spins on his heels and makes for the door, snatches his keys from the hook, turns and gestures at Toms prone figure. ‘Check the place for bugs, call for help if it looks like he’s overdosin’. Right?’ 

The bottom drops out of Roland’s stomach. ‘What the fuck,’ he protests. ‘You can’t say that and walk out.’

‘Make sure he keeps breathin’ is all. You got this.’ 

Roland doesn’t feel like he’s got anything under control as Wayne darts out the door. Then again, he didn’t spend years as a beat cop without learning how to deal with the drunk, the ill, and the very distressed so he heads back to Tom and leans over. Listening: breath in, breath out. That’s something.

He’s not about to search the entire house for listening devices but he takes over an hour to clear the sitting room — unscrewing lightbulbs, peering behind pictures and under bookcases, tables, chairs while Tom drools into a pillow in his sleep. Finds nothing, not that he couldn’t have missed something but his back aches and he’s getting fed up with the whole charade right as Tom lets out a moan and shifts fitfully on the couch.

Roland crouches at his side. ‘How’re you feelin’?’

Eyelids fluttering open as Tom rolls over and frowns, working the word hard in his mouth before he manages to rasp, ‘Roland?’ 

‘Yeah. I’m here. I got you.’

Tom squints upwards. Forehead knitted together with the effort of keeping him in focus. ‘Feel real dizzy, man.’ It comes out slurred. ‘I didn’t — you gotta know, I didn’t aim on gettin’ this fucked up. Swear it. Was I drinkin’?’

‘Ain’t your fault, Tom.’

‘I had a beer. Fuck, I had one beer, maybe more.’ Something thick in the way Tom chokes out the admission, as if it’s enough to set him crying. 

‘Hey, this ain’t about that. Hoyt stuck you with something, you remember any of that?’

_‘Hoyt,’_ Tom says, and a clarity sparks in his eyes as he seizes Roland by the hand. Intent. ‘I think I did something. Remember sittin’ outside that fuckin’ mansion gettin’ up the nerve to do something. Stupid.’

‘Said you broke into his house.’

‘Oh.’ Roland drags his thumb over Tom’s knuckles, watching Tom massage his temples with his free hand as if that might break through the fog clouding his drugged brain. ‘Yeah. Might’ve done that, maybe. Place was empty lookin’…Pretty sure I had my gun? Fuck. _Fuck.’_

‘Well, you didn’t shoot anybody far as I know. Hoyt was lookin’ pretty fuckin’ peachy when we met him not a half hour ago.’

But Tom’s on a different wavelength, stiffening with something Roland prays isn’t the beginning of a seizure or some seriously fucked up side-effect as he frowns in concentration. ‘Pink,’ he chokes, grip suddenly tight and crushing on Roland’s hand. ‘I saw it. Pink room underground. Dungeon.’

A shiver sets Roland’s spine straight. ‘You sure?’

‘It was a kid’s room. I know it.’

‘You reckon Will coulda been down there?’

Tom shakes his head, wrung-out but adamant. ‘Was a girl’s room. Drawings on the wall, princesses and shit.’ He blanches and swipes two thin fingers across his mouth. ‘Gonna be sick.’

Roland manages to haul Tom to the small bathroom down the corridor in time, fumbling with the lid and flipping it upright so Tom can collapse over the bowl and heave his guts out. It’s such a nakedly vulnerable moment Roland doesn’t know whether to stay or leave him to it — but the cautious voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Wayne tells him to stay. Don’t want the man to choke on his own puke. So Roland hovers at the sink while Tom bows his head over the toilet in an animal sort of prayer _(oh God, let it stop. amen)._

There’s an assortment of items neatly laid out above the sink: a toothbrush and glass, a folded tube of toothpaste, an unlabelled orange tube of pills and a pot of shaving cream. And there, balanced on the rim is a folded wooden-handled straight razor — of course, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Purple Hays the super-soldier can’t pass a morning without messing around with an open blade at his throat. It makes Hoyt’s words appear unbidden in his mind, along with a sudden image of blood pooled on the white tiles, Will Purcell’s fake skin splitting open under his knife. Roland glances at Tom. Pockets the razor.

There’s a moment of respite as Tom slumps, emptied out and panting, forehead resting on the cool porcelain. Roland fills the glass at the sink and crouches at his side.

‘Gotta replace those fluids,’ he says. ‘Come on.’

Tom takes the glass with a shaking hand and sips, swills the water, spits the sour taste from his mouth before drinking. His throat bobs weakly. ‘Think I might pass out,’ he mumbles, fingers slipping on the glass but Roland already has a hand out to take it from his grip.

‘I got you if you do.’

‘Good,’ Tom says, and pitches forward into Roland’s arms like a steer felled with a steel bolt to the head. 

The water ends up all over the floor but that doesn’t matter, not when Tom’s limp and unresponsive with his face jammed up against Roland’s collarbone. ‘Shit,’ Roland grunts, clutching Tom in a ludicrous balancing act he’s grateful no one else is around to witness. It takes him a few tries to get them both upright so he can half-drag, half-carry Tom’s unconscious body back to the sitting room.

It’s ungraceful and ungainly but he manages to tip Tom back onto the couch and swing his legs up onto the cushions, hesitating before unlacing Tom’s battered work boots and dumping them on the floor. Telling himself it doesn’t mean anything as he shrugs off his own jacket and lays it out over Tom’s shivering form, that it means nothing at all as he carefully swipes a spot of dried vomit from the corner of the man’s slack mouth. 

Tom’s eyes flicker open blearily, more unfocused and confused than before. 

‘Why…’ he mumbles, barely awake.‘Why’re you so good t’me?’ He lifts a hand and numbly traces the ridge of Roland’s cheekbone with a callused finger, follows the line of his nose until his fingertip comes to rest gently on Roland’s bottom lip. Roland freezes. ‘Don’t see how you can stand it.’

‘You ain’t well, Tom,’ says Roland, taking Tom’s hand and returning it to his side with a lump forming hot in his throat. He swallows. ‘You don’t want to do that.’ There’s a part of him that wants to lean in to Tom’s touch, to let Tom find whatever it is he’s searching for with questioning fingers, to reciprocate — but it wouldn’t be right. Not like this.

Tom closes his eyes. 

‘Can’t help it.’ A bone-tired flatness creeping into his voice. ‘Think I’ve been _wrong_ for a while now.’ 

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Roland says softly, hating the easy way his words sound like those of a different man. One that holds his distance. Keeps safe. Passes on judgement without reserving any for himself. He wants to erase it all, make sure Tom knows there’s nothing he could do to deserve the misery he thinks he is owed — but Tom’s breathing has already settled into the steady rhythm of deep sleep.

Roland blinks. Feels almost grateful when the front door clatters behind him to admit Amelia, Wayne and a whole side helping of accompanying questions: it means he can ignore the stab of regret lancing his chest, look away from Tom’s stilled, gaunt face. The pain he knows is lurking under the peaceful surface. Waiting.

He can’t afford distraction when there’s work to be done. 

***

They spend the afternoon pooling their information: Hoyt, the monster, the Purcells. Possible links. Even without corkboard they do a pretty good job of taping paper and pictures to the whitewashed walls to create one sprawling, improvised collage of evidence that spreads its tendrils out like ivy across Wayne’s hallway.

‘Come on, don’t do that,’ Wayne implores as Amelia takes a marker and neatly writes the word MISSING straight onto the paintwork above the pictures of Will and the folks from Davis Junction. ‘Gonna make me lose my deposit.’ 

‘Too late,’ Roland points out, pinning more xeroxed microfiche to the wall. ‘Don’t you got better things to be worryin’ about? This fuckin’ case, maybe?’

Amelia laughs. Turns out she’s a pretty mean researcher when it comes down to it: the black-and-white newsprint on Hoyt Energy, recent disappearances and photocopied pages on predatory animals and multiverse theory all come from her morning’s foray at the library. Roland would hate to see what she could dig up with more time; enough to put them out of a job no doubt. 

‘We gotta swing by the office, pick up what we got so far, make it cohesive. Hey, this MKUltra shit sounds familiar.’ Wayne’s squinting at a cut-out article, a picture of men in lab coats and stone-faced women. ‘Guess there was complaints after all, if it all got shut down after Lucy and the others did their bit.’

‘Rebranded into something else is more likely.’ 

‘Look at that fucker,’ mutters Wayne, pointing to the pixelated image of Harris James. ‘Bet he could tell us all about it.’

‘Like Hoyt did, sure. Who I’d like to talk to is the daughter, but it looks like we missed the boat on that one. Listen to this.’ Roland clears his throat and reads from a clipping dated January 5th 1980. 

_‘_ _We regret to announce the unexpected death of Isabel Georgina Hoyt, born_ blah blah blah _…proceeded in death by her husband Richard and her infant daughter Mary, survived by her loving father Edward_ …okay, here we go. _Isabel was committed to children, especially in her tireless work with the Hoyt Foundation. At the time of her death, she was working at the forefront of Hoyt Energy’s experimental division; her contributions to the realm of science will be sorely missed by her co-workers even as they vow to continue her life’s work…_ etcetera _…Those who choose to give a gift to honour Isabel are asked to make a contribution in her name to the National Institute of Mental Health._ ’

He looks up and raises his eyebrows at Amelia and Wayne. ‘Well that’s a polite way to say she offed herself, don’t you think? Hoyt sure as shit didn’t bring that up when we were havin’ our nice heart-to-heart.’

‘Can’t blame him.’ Amelia looks pensive.

Wayne frowns, says, ‘Experimental division’s nice and vague.’

‘Yeah. Guess if they’re lettin’ kid-eatin’ monsters loose in the neighbourhood they wouldn’t exactly fit that on the sign. _Experimental_ covers all manner of sins.’

‘Like testing on pregnant women.’

‘Yup, for starters.’ Roland thinks of Hoyt’s parting words and something electric snaps into place in his head. His fingers go slack around the piece of paper, mouth agape. 

Surely not.

He does the math in his head, counting into the past and coming up with aten-year-old girl with a shaved head. No details on her name. No parenthood. Just Hoyt’s word, a suspiciously hush-hush mandate without official police involvement, and a so-called miscarriage that just might tie it all together.

‘You okay, man?’ asks Wayne. ‘Kinda looks like you got hit over the head.’ 

‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m good,’ Roland says, blinking. He wants to bounce the theory off his companions but there’s still the oblique threat from Hoyt hovering over him, and it gives him pause. Wait and make sure before running his mouth. Check with a source. ‘You got a phonebook?’

Wayne nods, non-plussed, and points to a yellow pages stacked under the drinks table. 

It takes him a few moments of fumbling through bible-thin pages until he finds the number he’s looking for. Prays to fuck she remembers him, that she picks up. ‘Someone I gotta talk to,’ Roland says, dialling Lori’s number with one finger as he dregs up his last reserves of charm for the occasion. ‘Gotta get me a date.’

***

Wayne and Roland drop in to the Spingdale office when the material for the wall dries up. Roland nods to Frank the Front Desk, who greets them with a grunt and a cloud of viceroy smoke that lingers on their clothes long after they’ve left the lobby behind them. A similar lack of red carpet during their detour to the archives, where they pull out as many recent missing persons cases as they can without appearing suspicious before heading to the basement with their arms loaded with case-files. It looks like Diller and Bowen are out; no coats on the rack and coffee cups dry and empty. Wayne crosses to the board and starts unpinning their initial evidence: statements, pictures of the scene, the meagre suspect list.

Roland flips open the copier. Workflow silent and efficient, Roland hitting the buttons and Wayne passing him material to copy. Green light leaking out in hypnotising rhythm as it swipes left to right under the lid. 

‘So,’ Roland says, yawning into his collar. ‘Nothin’ like nearly gettin’ eaten by a monster to bring the action to the next level, that what I should take away from your success with Ms. Reardon last night?’

He swears Wayne ducks his head like some blushing white boy. 

‘Shut up, man,’ he says, terse but good-natured. ‘That weren’t my intention callin’ her over and you know it. Just sorta happened.’

‘Just sorta happened. Well shit, Purple, guess you got game after all.’

Wayne chucks him a stack of repots, mouth open to retort just as Cindy — the token department woman— kicks the door open and walks in. She stops at the sight of them, surprise and embarrassment crossing her face. 

‘Shit, sorry,’ she says. ‘Thought there wasn’t anybody down here. I don’t usually do that.’

‘Fuck, woman,’ grunts Roland, but he’s grinning. ‘We only got the one door.’ 

He’s always liked Cindy, even more so since the office-wide push-up competition last year: just a dumb betting game that started on a slow day among the ex-marines and new recruits with something to prove — but Cindy had crushed them all, arms still pumping long after the last man had collapsed on the ground. The rest of the officers treat her like she’s aiming to castrate every last one of them but Roland’s never felt threatened in the slightest. Hasn’t had such a good laugh in a long time.

And if some sneering rookie comes into the break room joking about dykes, well, he just might make sure they’re stuck on transcripts and evidence archiving for the next month or so. A bitter sort of satisfaction.

‘What’s up?’ says Wayne, casually flipping the documents in his hand face-down.

Cindy plonks a box of cassettes down on Roland’s desk. ‘Just bringing down some old hotline tapes to storage. Thought I’d stop by to re-shuffle the stationary on Diller’s desk.’

‘Purcell tapes? Leave ‘em here if you want, might have one last run-through if that don’t put you out.’ 

‘Sure.’ Cindy wanders over to Diller’s ordered collection of pens, picks one up and sets it perpendicular to the rest, cocking an eyebrow. Re-shuffles a bunch of colour-coordinated files. ‘So what’re you boys doing here anyway? Figured you’d all be out at Woodard’s.’

Roland frowns. ‘What happened at Woodard’s?’ 

‘Got beaten up last night, some vigilante posse with a grudge. Sprayed _Pedo_ and _Kiddy Killer_ on his house. Didn’t file a report of course, but his neighbours put in a noise complaint about the whole thing.’

‘They put in a complaint about a guy gettin’ beaten up on his own front lawn? Jesus.’

‘Yeah. Diller and Bowen jumped on it, any excuse to get another look inside Woodard’s place. Leaving me with a supermarket robbery and a bunch of shit to clean off my desk.’

‘Quiet day at the office, then.’

‘Sure, if the rise of adolescent crime doesn’t get you shaking in your boots. You think I don’t have better things to be doing than tracking down teenagers for stealing waffles?’

‘Thought that’s why you joined the force.’

‘Oh no,’ she says, winking over her shoulder as she slips out of the office. ‘I joined the force to get a husband, don’t you know?’ 

They watch her leave, similarly amused. ‘Should’ve told her you’re unavailable,’ comments Roland, turning back to the printer. ‘One man taken off the shelf.’

‘Neither are you. You got a date, remember?’

La Esquina Restaurant and Grill, 7pm: he nearly _had_ forgotten. More work to be done. ‘Shit yeah. Gotta swing by my place, clean up. You okay finishin’ off here?’

‘Interesting about Woodard.’ Wayne’s staring down at a statement, expression distant. ‘Bet you they’ll find a way to pin this on him. Tie it up all nice and simple, like the G.A. and the constituents want it.’

‘Probably,’ Roland says, too preoccupied to fully explore the depressing possibilities as he grabs his keys. His mind darts back to the couch, to the touch of worn fingers gentle and hesitant on his face. Pauses at the door. ‘Tell Tom I’ll come round to drop him home. If he’s awake.’ 

‘Sure you won’t have more pressin’ things to be doin’?’

‘I’d rather save the high romance for the second date. Can’t all have your animal magnetism.’ And with that he dashes from the office before Wayne can so much as wish him good luck.

***

La Esquina, funnily enough, is not positioned on the corner of any street. Roland keeps the joke to himself, though, figuring basic Spanish vocabulary isn’t something most women want explained to them on any kind of dinner date. He could launch in with a story about the few Mexican stablehands that passed through the ranch when he was a kid, the bits and pieces he picked up from them — but he chooses to greet Lori with a winning smile instead. A safe greeting.

‘Wow, you look great.’

‘Hey. So do you.’ She’s being generous: he barely had time to run a shower before pulling on a fresh shirt and pants and hot-footing it over to the restaurant. He hopes the stubble is the attractive kind rather than the hobo kind. Guess he’ll find out, if she decides to tell him anything.

They exchange a few more polite comments in the same vein, just shy of awkward as he leads her inside and follows the maître’d to a candlelit table. God, he hasn’t done this in a while, even without ulterior motives relating to nefarious goings-on at the local energy plant.

Lori toys with her napkin, looks up at him. ‘I was surprised, you know. To get your call. Thought you’d be busy with…all that’s going on.’ She twists her face in embarrassment, as if the murder is too shameful to bring up in public .

‘That’s a good reason as any to take a time-out, have a drink, talk something that ain’t shop,’ says Roland, shrugging. ‘You get kind of sick of lookin’ at your partner’s face all day every day. It’s nice to have such an edifyin’ change.’

‘How’s everything going? It must be awful, having to deal with all that.’

‘Ain’t exactly plain sailing but we’re gettin’ there. Bit by bit.’ They lapse into a pensive silence, the image of Will Purcell and a stagnant investigation spreading out between them. 

Lori coughs. The waiter comes with their drinks. A welcome relief. Roland has to stop himself from chugging his entire glass of whiskey - ice cubes and all - and takes a moderate sip instead, wishing they weren’t surrounded by doe-eyed couples sappily staring into each other’s eyes. 

‘Would’ve figured you for more of a white wine person,’ Roland says, right as Lori starts to say something. They each break off, duelling poorly for the other’s right to steer the conversation. 

‘Go ahead —’

‘—No, it’s okay.’

‘I was just going to say I don’t do this that often,’ says Lori, blushing. ‘I’d be just as happy sitting at home watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie, but I figured I ought to take the opportunity to get out more.’

‘Sure. Same. Well, not the House on the Prairie bit, but what with work and all I don’t get out as much as I used to. Hell, we’re makin’ a nice dinner out like it’s Operation Overlord. We’re just talkin’, right?’ 

She pushes a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘I sound like a bonafide shut-in. Most of my conversation revolves around mathematical formulas, things like that. Barely dinner-time conversation.’

‘Poultry got a place at the table. Unless you’re adverse to chicken, what with your job and all.’

‘I started off in poultry science, sure, but these days I’m more focused on maximising their energy output rather than the birds themselves.’

‘Shit-detail, so to speak. Hey, why’d the chicken get done for indecent exposure?’ Roland asks with all seriousness while Lori looks blankly at him. ‘Cause it got a pecker on its face.’

The waiter arrives with their order just in time to catch the tail-end of the terrible joke. Lori stifles a snort of laugher into a hand, ducking her head so she doesn’t have to meet his eye while the waiter fights to maintain a neutral expression.

The conversation picks up after this, tidbits on Lori’s background, church-life, hobbies that don’t mention her job. Eventually Roland decides to swallow caution and just go for it. 

‘You ever watch Star Trek?’ 

She nods.

‘You know that episode with the mirror universe?’ he asks, casual, wishing Wayne were here so he wouldn’t have to bullshit the whole thing. ‘Got me thinkin’, how that’d even work in real life; the science behind it, I mean. Hypothetically.’

Her face brightens in interest. ‘Multiple dimension theory,’ she says, perking up at the mention of anything remotely near her field of expertise. ‘It’s not just sci-fi, you know. Our universe may appear three-dimensional to us, but once you step outside those constraints there could be way more dimensions than we’re able to perceive. Including those with other worlds wrapped up inside.’

‘That sounds pretty hypothetical to me.’

‘Say there’s another dimension layered right on top of this one — one where you’re eating a salad instead of burger. Where I’m an artist. Where Spock is actually evil; a world of infinite variables. Think of it like…’ She drifts off, lost in thought. ‘Like an overhead projector. If you layer all the acetates over one another. Transparent but distinct.’ 

‘But we’re stuck on our slide.’

‘Okay. Say we’re an acrobat — no, scratch that. Take your burger, for example.’ She reaches over and drags his plate into the middle of the table. ‘So the top layer is our world. A small version of you can only walk upright, left to right side to side, on the surface of the bun. And say the bottom bun is another dimension — one tiny Roland is trying to get to but can’t. Because there’s a whole layer of space-time in between, separating the two worlds.’ 

Roland rubs his jaw, thinking of Wayne’s hugely simplified version of the problem. ‘So I’m stuck. Unless I can blast my way through, right? Hypothetically.’

‘Hypothetically. If you could create more energy than we’re currently able to create to make a rift in time and space, then sure, you could get to the upside down layer.’ She takes the toothpick holding the whole structure together and drives it deeper into all three sections to demonstrate, removes it to show the gaping damage. ‘Now you have a hole. Or a gate, whatever you want to call it. But like I said, it’s all majorly hypothetical.’

‘Guess that’s why I’m a cop and not a scientist. Shit, I don’t know why I asked.’

She chuckles and slides his plate back across the table. ‘Sorry for manhandling your burger. Guess I got a bit excited.’

‘Still looks edible to me.’ He takes a bite, leans back to get a good read of her face. ‘You ever work with Isabel Hoyt? Heard she passed not too long ago.’

A cloud flickers over the surface of her expression. ‘I didn’t, no,’ Lori says, frowning. He’s hit on some kind of nerve. ‘From what I heard she was brilliant but unstable. Obsessive. The loss of her family drove her work, sure, but it’s not like any of us got to see what she was doing. It all seemed very…hypothetical. Why d’you want to know?’

‘Morbid curiosity, nothin’ more. Guess you didn't work with Lucy Purcell neither.’

Lori shakes her head.

They continue to eat in silence, Roland cursing himself for ruining the candid atmosphere with such a heavy-handed question. If this were an interrogation room he’d be in his element, be better prepared, but he can hardly start a one-man bad cop routine over dessert without scaring her the fuck off. 

She coughs. ‘So, how are _you_ dealing with everything? The investigation, I mean.’

He lowers his fork. Christian woman like herself ought to be all about the truth, so shit, why shouldn’t he give it to her? 

‘Well,’ Roland says, the words tumbling free like boulders down a hillside as he gets into stride. ‘I got one twelve year old kid vanished, along with as six black folks that conveniently ain’t made the news yet — including children — plus I got a man just about out of his mind with worry to take care of, the rest of them other families to answer to, and I think you might know more ‘bout the fucked-up shit that’s goin’ on in this town than you let on.’ He chuckles darkly, flashes an unpleasant grin. ‘So I’m somewhat stressed, you might say.’

Lori’s eyebrows have just about disappeared into her hairline by the end of this little speech. She gapes, open-mouthed. ‘…I’m sorry to hear that. D’you want to talk about it?’

‘Look, I’m gonna go get the bill now, okay?’ says Roland, ears hot with shame. He’s really gone and lost it, something in him set unhinged and desperate that’s been brewing since the morning. He knows why. _(Tom’s bruised face, hand reaching out, unearthing some hidden thing)._ He wants to make it all better. He can’t.

By the time he gets back Lori already has her coat and handbag, ready to leave. He follows her from the building, working up some sort of apology in his head to make the whole thing less of a complete a disaster but she’s already turning and takes his arm like he didn’t just completely lose his shit. 

‘Well, that was lovely,’ she says conversationally, then lowers her voice as she glances around the darkened car park at the blank sheen of empty windshields and wind-scuffed trash. ‘ I think you’re right, there’s something wrong with this place. The town. Thought I had to be mistaken.’

‘What?’

She laughs like he’s just said something wildly funny, squeezing his arm with her fingers. He laughs as well. Stares at a white van parked ominously on the curb by the distant glow of a phone-booth. 

‘It doesn’t make any sense. But I think it’s what you’re looking for. The gate.’

‘Lori, if you’re at risk by talkin’ —’

But she’s already cutting him off, leaning in to plant a kiss on his cheek. ‘Follow true north,’ she murmurs, long hair brushing against his ear and hiding the movement of her mouth. ‘You’ll find answers.’

And then she’s gone, stepping to her car as if nothing unusual has passed; as if they’re two people waving goodbye at the end of an awkward first date. Roland blinks. Watches her go. Tries not to look too hard at the white van as he makes his own lonely way back to his car, head abuzz with the implication of her parting words and heart hammering hard against his ribcage. He could tell himself it’s an effect of her lingering perfume, the memory of her lips brushing his cheek that has him so worked up. But that would be a lie.

He takes the long way back to Wayne’s. Darkened backroads with the trace of faint headlights trailing behind him in the gloom.

***

Tom’s still asleep when Roland gets in. 

‘Thought you might change your mind, stay out past your curfew,’ grins Wayne, looking up from where he and Amelia are sat together nice and cosy at the kitchen table. A battered tape recorder in front of them, along with half-eaten bowls of curry and the smell of recent frying drifting from the kitchen.

Amelia rolls her eyes.

‘He woken up yet?’ Roland asks, inspecting Tom’s quiet form. Hands knotted tight over Roland’s jacket, face half-hidden under it, breath coming even and deep.

‘Got up to get sick a few times,’ says Amelia. ‘He’s been out of it since then. Must have been something pretty strong to put him down like that — my guess is he won’t remember anything come morning.’

Roland’s heart drops. He knew he’d have to bury the feeling threatening to bruise his chest from the inside whenever he thinks about that moment with Tom, but the thought of its loss still hurts. Perhaps it’s better, Tom not knowing. Better to forget Roland’s cowardice rather than let him think he reached out and was met with rejection masked as kindness. 

Fuck. He needs a drink.

‘Y’all makin’ each other mixtapes now?’ he grunts, fixing himself a few stiff fingers of bourbon from Wayne’s supply before stomping back to the kitchen and planting himself heavily on the spare chair. 

Wayne shakes his head. ‘Nah, man, we actually got something here. If you’d care to listen.’

‘That from the box Cindy dropped round?’

‘You’ll make detective yet.’ 

‘Shut up. No chance you got a compass, Purple?’

‘Not on me,’ says Wayne, sliding between amusement and confusion. ‘You need to find yourself some better pick-up lines? Can always just ask.’

‘Just get the damn compass, would you?’ Roland swigs his drink and shakes his head at Wayne’s retreating back. Amelia makes to continue eating, pauses and fixes him with a frank gaze.

‘He doesn’t know, does he?’

‘Know _what._ ’ 

She shrugs, spears some rice and chews slowly. Still watching him like he’s compromised himself somehow, going on a date with a woman instead of opening up to Wayne fucking Hays about shit he doesn’t care to share with anybody — least of all Amelia.

He hits play on the tape recorder, just for something to do rather than watch her watching him with those big judgy eyes. There’s static. A buzz and a click as the hotline phone is lifted from the receiver. 

A man’s voice. _‘State Police Hotline. Hello?’_

There’s a pause, like the caller’s having second thoughts about the whole thing. Then, a nervous voice, unmistakably a kid’s: _‘He’s not lost, he’s just hiding. You ought to know that.’_

_‘Is this about Will Purcell? Hello?’_

_‘She just wanted to find her brother, that’s all. We thought the woods would be safe but it wasn’t. It’s not her fault.’_

_‘Could you tell me your name?’_

_‘They said I wouldn’t have to.’_

_‘Okay.’_ The operator coughs. _‘Do you have any current information on the whereabouts of Will Purcell?’_

A second voice appears, young but filled with blank certainty, a clipped way of speaking. ‘ _…He’s hiding. Here but not here. In the Upside Down…He’s scared.’_

A beat. _‘Listen kid, if this is your idea of a joke —’_

The line goes dead. 

The tape deck goes round and round, hissing and spitting until the next call comes through. Roland hits rewind, hits play. Listens again, frowning. 

‘This is from before we found the body, ain’t it.’ He downs his bourbon and winces at the burn. ‘Upside Down? What the hell’s that meant to mean?’ 

Wayne comes back into the room holding a military kit in both hands. He pulls out a compass, chucks it to Roland with a raised eyebrow. ‘What’d you think of the tape? Intriguing show by our friend Mike, don’t you think?’

‘I recognised his voice,’ Amelia says. ‘That child’s not a liar.’

_Her brother._ Well, shit. He’s willing to bet his apartment and entire career that the second kid happens to be a girl with a shaved head. Roland says so out loud. They both stare at him in confusion. 

‘Why d’you think that?’

He’s too busy watching the red arrow spin around and around in his hand to answer. It orients itself and wobbles to a halt, pointing right into the orange glow of the setting sun through Wayne’s front window. Ah. Well that’s definitely odd. He plays the tape again, making a shushing motion with his hand as Mike’s weedy voice crackles through the speakers until — “ _He’s hiding. Here but not here. In the Upside Down.”_

Roland stops the tape and looks up into Amelia and Wayne’s curious faces. ‘Imagine a burger —’ he begins, right as Tom Purcell sits up on the couch with an aching groan as if to announce the motherfucker of all hangovers. 

Tom squints at them, hair tousled and shirt undone and face creased with a single burning question. Yet his voice is surprisingly level and unshaken as he asks:

‘How do we go about findin’ the goddamn Upside Down, whatever the fuck that is?’

A hard wave of protectiveness and certainty washes over Roland as he imagines reuniting father and son: imagines having something to give that’s not more empty promises and undeserved pain. Something that would give Tom a reason to live — seeing as he’s too cowardly to offer it himself. 

He shoots Tom a grin. Holds up the compass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wayne, casually in passing: When I was on the force in the '80s, that woman could do more pushups than anybody in the department.
> 
> Me, banging pots and pans together: Who was she? Who _was_ she?


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If all goes to plan there's gonna be one more chapter (8 chapters, like the show) and an epilogue (not like the show but I can't wrap this up in one more update, rip).
> 
> Shoutout to anyone who's commented so far! You're all legends.

Roland has often imagined what knowing Wayne during their time overseas would have been like. Sure, he’s seen bits and pieces of that man during their partnership, hints that rise to the surface whenever Wayne reaches a steady hand towards his gun as if the threat of the jungle has never fully left him. _Purple Hays._ A stranger all these months — but not anymore.  Wayne leans over with a map spread out before him, forehead wrinkled in concentration as he moves his hands from spot to spot. Figuring tactics. Ambush and extraction. The man has a head for it, but Roland doubts he ever had the experience of managing such a mixed bag of volunteers as the ones now crowded around the table. 

‘See, even providin’ we somehow break into Hoyt Energy, follow the compass, find the gate without getting stopped,’ Wayne says, matter-of-fact. ‘We’d still be walkin’ right into the creature’s home turf with next to no backup. That’s why we split up.’ He taps a green wooded area. ‘One team lures the monster out into the open, make it safe for the team headin’ to the gate. Give the all-clear.’

Roland considers this. ‘Still don’t see how we don’t all end up dead in that scenario. How d’you go about distractin’ a kid-huntin’ monster anyway? Mime? Song and dance?’

‘We know where it hunts,’ says Amelia. ‘We know it’s predatory, we know it likes fresh blood.’ 

‘So someone plays bait.’ 

‘It’ll be on our territory. We’ll be prepared, have the upper hand. Kill it if we can,’ says Wayne, voice firm: there’s belief there, a rock-like need to make the best with what they’ve got. Which isn’t a lot. 

‘You’re the man, Purple, your word goes. You say we’re gonna kill it, we kill it.’ Roland scratches his jaw, turns to the only silent member of the table. ‘Tom? What d’you think?’ 

Tom’s been sitting with his arms folded across his chest, lit cigarette untouched and smouldering in his fingers and his face drawn and pale as the rest of them bounce idea after idea around the kitchen. He swallows. ‘I’m aimin’ to go in whether it’s safe or not. Ain’t nobody got to put their life on the line if they don’t want to, but yeah. Detective Hays got a point. Could be a help.’

‘I should go with him,’ Wayne says slowly, which is exactly what Roland was about to say. He opens his mouth to object but Wayne shoots him a _look._ ‘We’re lookin’ for a needle in a haystack here. You need a tracker, plus I’ve been there before. I know what to expect.’

This makes a whole lot of sense but it leaves Roland with an itching sense of impotence and a tight feeling curling like burnt paper his chest. He doesn’t like the idea of leaving Wayne and Tom to break into another dimension while he sits around twiddling his thumbs, working the motor pool all over again. Except that’s not quite it.

‘So it’s just me facin’ off a monster, is it?’ Roland asks, trying not to sound completely sour at the uninviting prospect. ‘Peachy.’

Amelia frowns. ‘Not just you, no.’

‘Whoa, whoa, lady,’ Roland protests. 'I’m not seein’ the part where you got firearms training and a military background, so don’t act like you’re taggin’ along for the ride.’

‘I’m just meant to wait for you boys to get yourselves killed, is that it? Because I’m a woman?’

Roland shakes his head and laughs, chewing on his lip. ‘No, cause you ain’t got the experience.’

‘Forgive me, but none of us got experience dealing with this kind of thing! Show me where it says monster-hunter on your CV and I’ll sit this one out like a good civilian, if that’s what you want. Wayne?’

Wayne regards their identical outrage with a detached sort of calculation. ‘I don’t like it either,’ he says, ‘but you got to have each others’ backs. Amelia can be lookout, extra pair of eyes and ears to stop you gettin’ your head ripped off.’

A look of triumph flashes across her face. ‘Got ourselves a real crack team,’ Roland grunts, shaking his head. ‘Fuckin’ A.’ 

Amelia glares at him and he’s forcibly reminded that she deals with shithead teenagers for a living. If only the monster could be so easily quelled with a hard stare, he thinks, they might be in with a fighting chance. 

Tom gets up stiffly and stubs his cigarette out in the sink. ‘If y’all’re all done bitchin’,’ he says, ‘we should go back to mine. Explain to Will what’s goin’ on.’ 

Roland winces. 

He can’t blame Tom for being out of sorts after the night he’s had, not when he looks like death warmed up and his kid is still out there alone and lost — but there’s something pointed and pissed off about the way Tom says it. Like he’s redrawing a line scuffed and faded by Roland’s bootprints.

‘Good idea,’ says Wayne. ‘You two head on, relay the plan. There’s some stuff I need to pick up first. You got any weapons in the house?’

Tom pauses, a faint twitch pulling at the corner of his mouth. ‘Lucy used to keep a shotgun on top of her dresser. Always thought she’d shoot me with it.’

‘Need shells then,’ Wayne mutters, oblivious to the darker implication. Scrawls something brief on his apocalyptic shopping list.

There’s not much else to be done so Roland follows Tom out to the car, into the rain that spits down from the flat grey of the sky and speckles the cracked tarmac below and reaches a high tempo as Roland fumbles with his keys. Tom’s got Roland’s spare jacket propped open over his head, shivering, twill and suede soaked through by the time Roland manages to pop the lock. 

They pull out into the wet street in near silence apart from the drag of wipers on the windscreen.

Roland lets a few blocks go by before the quiet becomes too much. ‘How’s your head?’ he asks. Glancing over at Tom’s dark profile.

‘Had hangovers hurt worse,’ Tom mumbles, huddled in on himself with the jacket draped over his knees. ‘Nothing I ain’t felt before, just with more blackin’ out.’

‘You remember much? Seemed pretty out of it.’

A flicker crosses Tom’s face. It could be a trick of the light, an effect of the rain rippling down the window behind him that casts a refracted pattern throughout the car, but to Roland it looks like the restrained flinch of a man who is trying his best _not_ to remember.

‘Remember breakin’ into Hoyt’s, then wakin’ up on Hays’ couch. That’s it. Must’ve been pretty drunk along with whatever shit they stuck me with.’

‘Sure,’ Roland says, neutral. Trying not to stare too hard at the uneasy way Tom gazes out the window, his knuckles clenched white on the suede of Roland’s jacket, the hollow dip and bob of Adam’s apple against the stubble of his throat, the bruised corner of his mouth. He tells himself it’s just idle curiosity. That it’s only natural he should wonder what it would be like to return the touch; to feel the incline of Tom’s face under his fingers as the other man had felt Roland’s only hours ago.

He decides, drugged or not, that Tom Purcell must be very brave. Even if it was the only brave moment in his entire life it’s more than Roland can bring himself to do, sitting in silence on their way to fight men and monsters and anything else that stands between them and a missing child.

‘I got to know,’ he finally grunts, fumbling to get the heater going without taking his eyes off the empty road. ‘Shit, there’s a big possibility we’re all gonna die, but I got to know this ain’t some kind of suicide mission for you.’ 

‘There a difference?’ Tom rasps, face angled away. 

‘Yeah,’ Roland says, working hard to keep his tone level. ‘There is to me.’

‘…If it was, I wouldn’t be bringin’ y’all along for the ride. Don’t plan on checkin’ out while my boy’s still missin’, Detective.’

‘Even if shit goes south. Even if you find Will and he ain’t…if it’s too late. I need you to promise me you’re still gonna come home.’

Tom turns in his seat and looks at Roland, brows lowered. A deep tiredness written in the lines of his face. ‘Don’t see what I got to come home to, if that’s the case.’

They’ve pulled onto Shoepick Lane by now, driving down the street in the quiet hours yet again like two men with something to hide. Roland wishes that they did. ‘Just promise me you’ll try,’ he says, his fucking bleeding heart set to get him in trouble if it’s not already too late. ‘I want to know you’re gonna try to make it out, whatever goes down in there. I need that from you.’

The dry tremor in his voice is much, much too obvious. This time it’s Roland that looks away, up at the dark windows of the house beyond while Tom works an answer around in his mouth like chewing tobacco. ‘Why —’ he says, then breaks away, staring out the windshield. 

The house has lit up like a carnival. Lights flashing like mad through the windows and on the porch, bulbs pulsing with danger. With warning. 

Tom is out of the car and running up toward the chaos in an instant, outline stark against the glow of all the lights in the house. There’s something wrong. Roland leaps out of the car and follows the disorienting light show all the way to Will’s room. 

‘I’m here,’ cries Tom. ‘Will, what’s happenin’? What’s goin’ on?’

The fairy lights above the alphabet blocks flicker in spasmodic rhythm. Then, one by one, very fast, they take on an order. Spelling out a message. 

‘Slow down, kid,’ says Roland, fumbling with his notepad and pen as the lights switch from colour to colour with dizzying speed. ‘I’m gettin’ there.’

It takes him a few repeats but he finally scribbles out a cohesive sentence. Two words. IT’S COMING.

‘Will, you gotta hide, ’ he calls, trying for Tom’s sake to keep his voice steady as he addresses the empty room. ‘We’ll find you, okay? We’re on our way, you just got to hold on a little while longer. I swear.’

The lights pulse terribly bright. 

‘Go!’ yells Tom. The whole room goes dark. Just the two of them breathing heavily in the otherwise silent house, straining to listen as if they might be able to hear the distant sound of Will fleeing for his life in the Upside Down. 

Tom lets out a choked kind of sob.

It’s easier, in the dark, for Roland to reach out and take Tom by the hand. Gently squeezing Tom’s palm in his own while the other man trembles in his grip, as the awful implication of the surrounding darkness fills up the room with a dense sort of dread. 

‘He’s made it this far,’ Roland finally murmurs. ‘We don’t know how close it was. Could’ve had time to go hide.’

‘Or it’s got him.’ The brokenness in Tom’s voice makes it clear which one he thinks most likely.

‘Can’t give up hope. S’all we got, man.’ Roland laces their fingers together and holds on tight, hoping Tom can feel the belief radiating through their touch. That it might be a comfort. ‘You’re goin’ to find him.’

They stand like this for a long while, hand in hand as their eyes adjust to the gloom. The darkness becoming just that little bit more bearable. 

***

It’s not like they can afford the luxury of doubt at this stage, not when Amelia and Wayne show up toting half the contents of an army surplus store and one very sharp, very deadly looking bear trap. The teeth sit there glinting under the kitchen light in a horrible razor-toothed grin as they spread their supplies out on the table. Petrol canisters. Rattling boxes of shotgun shells, .357 ammo for Wayne and Roland’s revolvers, flat-head nails. A crateful of empty beer bottles (salvaged from the trash out back). Old fireworks left over from the Fourth.

There’s a certain grimness to their preparations after the news about Will, a kind of inward resolve that absorbs their individual thoughts as they work. Amelia and Wayne sit at the table, the smell of gas and motor oil fierce in the enclosed space, soaking rags in a careful molotov-cocktail preparation line. Ignoring the ear splitting hammering from the back where Tom is dead-set on sinking each and every nail into an old wooden baseball bat with a barely restrained focus. Arm going back and forth like a piston, face drawn and unreadable.

Roland catches himself staring.

He shakes free from his rattled thoughts, turns his attention to loading the spare firearms: the pump-action on Lucy’s shotgun is a bit slow, maybe, but he reckons it’ll do the job. Racks it smoothly right as someone hammers their fist on the front door, insistent, even more ear-splitting than the hammering out back. 

The knock comes again. Louder. 

Might be some neighbours pissed off at the noise but regular decency should ensure the Purcells are left alone to their grief, even if that grief involves breaking every noise regulation the county’s got in place. This must be something more pressing. Roland keeps the shotgun lowered at his side as he opens the door. 

Brett Woodard is standing on the porch with one large fist raised to knock. He steps back, surprise and recognition blooming across a face that looks like someone took a steel-toed boot to it, deviated his septum, mashed in a couple of his teeth and blacked one eye. Not a pretty picture.

‘Detective,’ he says. ‘What’re you doin’ here?’ 

‘Now ain’t a good time, man,’ grunts Roland, making to shut the door. Woodard puts out a hand.

‘I just want to talk to Purcell. I don’t want to do nothing hurtful, just talk.’ He furrows his brow. ‘What’re you doin’ with that shotgun? Expectin’ company?’

‘Come back tomorrow.’

‘Where’s Mr. Purcell, huh?’ Woodard says, and presses in. ‘What’s that smell?’ Roland’s caught off balance by Woodard’s size as the door bounces open and hits him in the chest, something he should have seen coming but it’s too late. The man is shoving past him to the room beyond. Comes to a halt at the kitchen.

‘What the fuck? Sergeant?’

Woodard is clearly unprepared for the scene before him: Wayne looking up from the counter, caught holding an unmistakably improvised incendiary device, Amelia beside him soaking rags in petrol. The screen-door swings open as Tom comes in from the backyard, viciously spiked bat in one hand and a hammer in the other. Woodard gapes.

‘Shit Roland, you just let him in?’ Wayne says with disbelief. 

‘He’s big.’

Woodard’s shaking his head. ‘Just wanted to talk to Purcell is all. Say that shit they wrote on my house, it ain’t true. Didn’t hurt nobody, especially no kid. I ain’t perverted. He gotta know that.’ He picks up one of the loose shotgun shells lying on the table. ‘All this for me?’

‘Go home,’ insists Wayne, military voice snapping into action. ‘Forget you saw any of this stuff, you hear?’

‘You’d be better soakin’ that in kerosene,’ Woodard says absently to Amelia. ‘Add bleach or weedkiller to make it real nasty. What’s all this for, huh? Looks like you folks are readyin’ for something big.’

Roland steps up behind him and coughs. ‘Think you oughta leave, buddy. We’re busy.’

It’s hard to make a man built like Woodard to go anywhere. He merely half-turns, ponderous. ‘Thing is, Detective, looks like you’re only just gettin’ started. Me? I’ve been ready since they took us outta that jungle and told us things were back to normal,’ he says. The ghost of a smile plays at the corners of his craggy face. ‘Things ain’t never been normal.’

‘You can say that again,’ mutters Tom. He swings underarm and tosses Woodard the nail-bat across the kitchen. Turns to Roland with raised eyebrows. ‘You want experience? There’s someone who got it.’

Woodard catches it in one big hand. Takes a mock-swing, long black hair moving with the motion of it, and looks up at the kitchen at large.

‘So,’ he asks, ‘what exactly is it we fightin’?’

***

It feels only right that it should all go down at Devil’s Den. 

Roland looks up at the black shadow of the ranger tower, the outline thin and unnatural against the surrounding trees and the waxing moon above. A light chill air rifles through the dead leaves, sending them clattering with warning at their feet. It’s cold enough for each breath to hurt. Wet seeps through his jeans as he kneels and sets the bear trap ready on its spring, covers it with a camouflage of dug earth and mulched leaves.

Woodard nods in approval of a job well done. Turns back to the object in his hands, an unarmed Claymore mine chipped with age and rust— containing the ability to blow their cosy little group to oblivion if Woodard decides to screw in the blasting cap and pull the trip wire before they set it up right. The thought twists Roland’s gut in an uneasy sort of way. 

He sidles over to where Tom is unloading chunks of offal from a battered tin bucket, gloved hands dropping the meat in a trail to the centre of the clearing directly below the tower. He considers making a joke about the poor butcher Wayne had woken in the middle of the night with demands for meat and pigs-blood in the name of the State Police Department, but reconsiders. Tom’s been withdrawn all night. Quiet on the drive over apart from one request for Roland to pull over in front of a church, where Roland had sat and watched Tom dash inside. Didn’t ask why, just lets Tom slide into the car a few minutes later out of breath and flushed with embarrassment. 

One more candle burning from inside the dark chapel. For guidance. 

Hell, even Roland’s willing to offer up a silent prayer to whatever higher power’s out there as he thinks of the upcoming altercation. He’s not so proud to fail to admit he’s weak in the legs at the thought — not for himself, but for the others. That whatever they do, Wayne or Tom might not return from the Upside Down, ripped to pieces by whatever beast is prowling between two worlds. Lost forever.

It dries up his mouth with terror. Especially when he looks at Tom. 

Above them, Amelia casts down a flashlight beam. Once, twice, a signal test. Roland shields his eyes and glances up, then back at Tom.

‘Hey,’ says Roland, gruffly. ‘Can you…? Just come over here a sec.’

Tom looks up blankly, drawn out of some dark thought as Roland takes his arm and steers him toward to opposite tree line. Their feet crunching through the leaves and bent pine needles, but Woodard and Wayne are too preoccupied to watch them go. 

‘What?’ says Tom, stripping off his gloves and folding his arms across his chest. They’re deep in the woods now, the light from the tower coming as a faint glow through the trees. ‘Still got work to be done.’

‘I know.’ He wants to beat his fists against the nearest oak, smash his head in so he doesn’t have to stumble over the words fighting in his brain. ‘Think we need to talk is all. Before, uh, before you go.’

‘Fuck, Roland.’ Tom grunts. ‘I’m goin’. Don’t need your fuckin’ coddlin’ tryin’ to convince me otherwise.’

‘That’s not what I —’ Roland feels the blood rising to his face. ‘I’m not stoppin’ you from doin’ nothin’, okay? You can fuckin’ go and die if that’s what you want to do, man, that shit’s no business of mine.’

‘It ain’t,’ spits Tom, dragging a hand across his mouth. Roland’s gaze catches on the spot — the cut splitting Tom’s lip — and has to drag his eyes away. 

‘Yeah. That’s right.’ Then why does it feel like something in him might crack apart if the last words they ever speak to each other are in anger? Perhaps he’s doing a bad job at hiding the misery creeping into his expression because Tom ducks his head. Grips his arms as if his bones are trying to exit at the elbow.

‘You should. Uh. You should take this.’ Roland holds out his gun. 

Tom looks at it and lets out a bitter, choked laugh. ‘You’re the one that needs it. Everything goes accordin’ to plan, we won’t even see the fucker.’

‘That’s the thing,’ murmurs Roland. ‘Far as I know, things don’t ever go accordin’ to plan.’

The words solidify in the cold air, become heavy and thick with meaning. Roland wishes Tom would quit blinking owlishly at him and take the damn revolver, but then again that would mean breaking the moment between them. Maybe they’ll stand here forever until the cold snap hits and their bodies freeze over.

Tom flinches, looking into Roland’s face instead of his upturned hand. ‘I can take care of myself.’

‘I know,’ Roland murmurs. ‘I know you can. But you shouldn’t have to.’

And fuck, maybe it’s the thought of getting his face ripped off by a bloodthirsty monster that makes him do it but can’t help it any longer. He steps forward. Tom retreats in unthinking reaction but there’s nowhere for him to go, not with a sturdy pine tree at his back — still, there’s plenty of time for him to shove Roland away but he just watches with wide eyes as Roland leans past him and lifts the hem of his shirt to tuck the gun into the waistband of his jeans with slow, deliberate fingers. 

He can hear Tom’s breath hitch, right up against his ear. 

They might as well be the only people for miles around. 

Roland knows the woods can keep a secret, knows it from the lingering question about what happened to Will, who placed the body, which paths the monster hunts in the dead of night. Figures there’s room for one more as he runs his thumb down the scratchy hollow of Tom’s cheek to the hard line of his jaw.

Tom fingers tangle into the material of Roland’s lapels and then his mouth is on Roland’s, hungry and searching and warm. Warm enough to drive away all the bitterness of the surrounding cold but Tom still shivers against him. Trembling. Roland kisses back, soft and insistent but letting himself take his time, hands braced against the bark at either side of Tom’s head with his leg jutted up against Tom’s knee.

When they break apart, Tom’s face is flushed with heat and his perpetual worried frown has returned to its home above his nose. ‘What —’ he rasps. ‘You…?’

‘Now d’you see why I want you to come back?’ Roland says, and kisses the dip of his neck, theunderside of his jaw, the curving lines etched into the side of his mouth. ‘Tom. I mean it.’

Tom puts a hesitant hand on Roland’s chest as if to feel that he’s not some spectral apparition. Finds solid flesh and the beating heart underneath. ‘I didn’t think you…were,’ he says, voice shaking. ‘Didn’t think you could be like that.’

‘Like you?’ Roland murmurs. ‘Whatever you want to call it, man. Yeah.’

There’s something restrained in the bunching muscles of Tom’s jaw, the fleeting twinge of pain that crosses his face. He looks like he desperately wants to cry. Roland cups his face and kisses him again, hooks a hand around the nape of his neck and pulls him close.

‘If I come back and you’re the one that’s up and fuckin’ died, I’m gonna be pretty mad,’ Tom mumbles into Roland’s shoulder. ‘So you know.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind.’ Roland grins and kisses him once more for good measure before straightening and cracking his knuckles. _At least that’s something,_ he thinks. Tom’s made no promises but there’s a hard glint in his eyes that looks determined, droop-eyed despair gone and calcified into something other than a death wish. Like he’s just woken up for the first time.

_‘Roland?’_ comes Wayne’s voice, calling through the woods. Tom jumps. _‘Hey, Tom?_ Where you at?’

‘Coming!’ yells Roland, and together they stumble back through the undergrowth to the distant clearing where Wayne and the others stand waiting. It’s gotten darker somehow. Quieter. ‘What’s the hollerin’ about?’

‘Where you been?’ grunts Wayne. ‘There’s a monster roamin’ about, remember.’

‘Yeah yeah. Just givin’ Tom a few tips how to deal with your LRRP-ass, Purple, seein’ as he’s your new running-mate. You want the shortened version? I got a whole presentation.’

‘Whatever, man. We gotta go.’ Roland feels the fake humour slip from his face. He looks at Wayne, then looks at Tom. Swallows. ‘Y’all ready?’

‘Ready as we’ll ever be,’ mutters Woodard, shouldering his rifle.

Wayne makes to slap Roland on the back but that shit doesn’t wash; Roland pulls him down into a fierce uncomfortable hug, gets an awkward armful of Wayne’s bony shoulder and ribcage but it doesn’t matter. ‘Get in and get out, that’s the plan Purple,’ he says in Wayne’s ear. ‘You better stick to it. Y’all got your compasses?’

‘Quit fussin’, I got my orders,’ says Wayne, extricating himself with rueful care. ‘Long as you hold up your end.’

‘Let me worry about that. Now scram.’

Wayne shakes Woodard’s hand, gives Amelia a long and chaste kiss that brings a flush to both their faces. 

Tom looks at Roland. Holds out his hand.

‘Go find your son, Mr. Purcell,’ Roland says. Squeezes Tom’s hand in his own.

The corners of Tom’s mouth quirk up ever so slightly. ‘I aim to do just that, Detective West,’ he replies, then his hand is gone from Roland’s and he’s turning to follow Wayne to the parked cars. Worry rises hot in Roland’s mouth but he quells it, gives a final wave to the headlights that cut towards them as Wayne turns his car and heads down the bumpy forest road into the dark.

His waving-arm is suddenly heavy as stack of bricks. He swings it at his side, shrugs at Woodard and Amelia like it all doesn’t make him want to chase after the car like a traffic-crazed dog. Like he isn’t wildly afraid. 

‘Now we wait, huh?’

Amelia folds her arms and nods, solemn and as serious as a priest. ‘Now we wait.’

***

The radio sits silently at Roland’s hip for well over an hour before the signal comes through. 

He’s sitting on the first few cold rungs leading up to the tower above, trying not to think of Tom; his chapped mouth, the tug of his hair through Roland's fingers, the dry rasp of his stubble. Trying not to think of anything at all. If only he could make his mind go still and blank like deep well-water he might have a chance at surviving the night, but he can’t. His fingers itch. He wants to hit something.

He’s had long nights before, sure, stake-outs, dry stultified days in courtrooms that made him want to rip his hair out — but they had nothing on this. The knotted, impotent feeling. Out in the dark, Woodard lies on his belly in the dirt silent as stone. A model watcher. Roland snorts; he ought to be taking notes.

Above him, Amelia lets out a little huff of air and shifts her skirt around her knees. ‘I’m not happy sitting here while Wayne’s out there, either,’ she says in a low voice. 

‘What’s that meant to mean?’ 

He stops the impatient drumming of his fingers, shifts to glare up at her. Not sure what she thinks she knows, but it gets his back up anyway to see the kind understanding in her dark eyes. Like she sees him.

‘Roland,’ she says, impossibly patient. ‘Wayne said to have your back. I’ve got yours.’

‘Fuckin’ hope so,’ he grunts, right as the radio flares to life under his jacket with a shock-wave crackle. He fumbles it out and holds it up to better hear the muffled transmission. 

_'Roland, you copy? Over.'_

‘Loud and clear,’ Roland says, holding down the button and trying hard to quell the flood of relief that threatens to wash over him at the mere sound of Wayne’s voice. ‘Over.’

_'Red Five is in position, I repeat Red Five is in position. Over.'_

‘What the fuck?’ mumbles Roland but Amelia just lets out a chuckle and reaches down to steal the radio from Roland’s hands.

‘We read you, Red Five,’ she says. ‘Red Two commencing diversion. Good luck, squadron leader.’

_'See you on the other side, babe. Over and out.'_

Amelia folds down the antenna with a snap, humour gone as quickly as the crackling radio signal. ‘It’s time,’ she says, as if Roland hadn’t just heard whatever nerd babble the two of them had been spouting over the line. ‘Better move fast.’

‘I know. Come on then.’ He holds out his left arm and she looks at him, then down to the knife in her hand. ‘You want I can do it myself.’

‘No, it’s okay.’ She unclasps the blade and bites her lip, determination written all over her face. He wishes she’d just get it over and done with: their little blood oath of the night. ‘I’ll do it.'

‘Whoa whoa whoa, I _need_ my fuckin’ hand,’ he exclaims, right as she makes to slice him a good one across his entire fucking palm as if she's aiming to put the whole thing out of commission. ‘Why don’t you cut the whole thing off for good measure? Shit.’

‘Sorry,’ she hisses, practically glowing with embarrassment. 

He rolls up his sleeve and she puts the blade to the crook of his elbow and scores a deep cut that leaks blood all the way down to his fingers and drips thickly onto the grass below. Roland winces. 

‘Reckon that’ll do nicely. Now, get up there.’

She does, casting him one last worried look before climbing the tower stairs out of sight. He picks up the bat at his feet and walks to the middle of the clearing and lets the blood sprinkle the surrounding ground, the smell of it sharp even to him. Tasty stuff. 

Woodard gives two short whistles. Roland gives him a thumbs-up, or at least gives a thumbs-up to the distant spot he thinks the man lies in wait. Hard to tell in the dark: Woodard’s a pro.

He hums the tune to a John Prine song under his breath, listens to the crack of twigs under his boots and the heavy hammering of his own heart. Would the fucking thing even show up for one full-grown adult and a few chunks of meat? Maybe it only likes kids; maybe it only shows up for the best stuff; maybe it likes fresher, better tasting blood better than the blood of some short-ass Texan playing detective in northwesterly bumfuck Arkansas —

The torch at the top of the ranger tower flickers on and off, on and off, shattering the darkness with an unsettling warning without Amelia having to lay a hand on it. It’s here.

He spins on his heels, suddenly aware that their plan fucking sucks right as something drops from the underside of the tower steps with a wet sucking sound — just drops out of nowhere easy as can be, stringing thick gunk from the spot as it slowly rises to its feet and turns to look _right at him_ with a steady, foreign intelligence.

Wayne’s right. It doesn’t have a face.

The creature tilts the horrifying blank ridge of its head and lets out a weird chitter as it sizes him up, flexing elongated fists that sport claws as long and sharp as bowie knives on the end of each tapered finger. 

‘Come on,’ Roland says. ‘Come on, you ugly motherfucker.’

The thing tenses and leaps right at him with a deafening howl similar to two sheets of ridged metal being battered together, making Roland stumble back. He’s transfixed by the speed and the sinewy strength of the thing as it makes to slice him open with its claws, totally unprepared for its raw power and very close to getting ripped to shreds — just as two bullets hit the creature right in the face, quick and brutal.

It makes a weird noise, staggers slightly but doesn’t fall, blindly thrashing around to source the sudden attack and Roland takes his opening. _Plant your feet,_ says a firm voice in his head that sounds eerily like his father, _And swing like you ain’t a pussy, for God’s sake._

Roland swings — beautiful contact, oh it’s out of the pitch with this one! — and wallops the monster a short and hard hit to the muscled side of its ribcage, followed up with one more to the hind-leg. Yanks the nails free with a spatter of black blood and makes to swing again. It swipes at him and he ducks back, and then Woodard is rising out of the shrubbery and lets out a full burst into the creature’s flank, AK-47 propped high at his shoulder and his long hair tied back, a soldier back in familiar territory at last.

The thing roars, face splitting apart like an orange peel to reveal a bottomless, overlapping maw of gaping teeth in a ear-splitting noise of pure rage.

_‘What the fuck,’_ Roland yells. 

Woodard continues to advance, sending a steady stream of bullets popping off the thing’s leathery skin like so many sparks off flint — and still the monster refuses to fall. It rounds on Woodard and leaps at him, knocking him to the ground with one blow. This is bad, very bad, the monster with its gaping maw inches away from Woodard's neck and Roland too far away to stop it.

A sharp piercing whine, then a crackling _BOOM_ as a firework comes shooting down from the tower and rips up the ground a few metres away in a shower of red and gold sparks.

‘Hit it, not us!’ howls Roland, shielding his eyes from the light and heat. ‘Jesus, woman!’ 

But the creature is distracted, turning back to Roland as if he just shot the fucking thing and didn’t nearly get blown up alongside it. It suddenly strikes him that any one of them could trip the bear trap, not just the monster, but it’s a bit late to be worrying about that as the creature bounds toward him on all fours with spittle trailing from the hungry Venus Flytrap of its mouth. 

The second rocket hits it squarely in the side. 

There’s a smell of burning flesh, of animal rage and panic. It wheels back, blinded and in pain, pale hairless skin blistering and burnt red. 

‘Atta girl,’ Roland says under his breath, gripping the bat. ‘That’s it.’

Amelia seems to be getting the hang of things: a molotov cocktail trails a flaming arc in the air and shatters at the thing’s feet, spewing flames and petrol up into the air. The gout of flame sends all three of them to the ground in a sudden wave of heat and sound. Roland loses the bat. Rolls onto his back and sees the creature on fire, flames roiling over its back and limbs in a wild blaze as it flails around the clearing. 

The creature bellows, and Woodard staggers to his feet and shoots it twice more in the chest. It staggers back. Two more hits and…

The bear trap closes its sharp teeth around the monster’s leg with a sharp _snap_.

It doesn’t sound too happy.

Woodard holds up his gun. ‘Let’s finish this,’ he calls, dirt and sweat streaking his face. ‘Think we got the son of a—’

The monster twists around and lunges at him. Roland sees a spray of blood cut through the air in a wet shower, feels some of it spatter him in the face like mist. Woodard drops to the ground. The creature’s still burning, still letting off a yellow fiery glow as it drags the bear trap toward Woodard’s prone form with murderous intent. _It’s fucking unstoppable,_ Roland thinks wildly; no amount of bullets or fire or nails can keep it down for long. First it’s going to kill Woodard, then him, then Amelia, then return home and have Tom and Wayne for a light supper. They’re fucked.

He hears Amelia scream as the monster brings its sharp claws down onto Woodard’s chest. 

And freezes.

Either there’s some horrible thing happening that he can’t see or the monster is taking a time-out from ripping Woodard’s guts to shreds: it stands over him, totally fixed to the spot as if they’ve hit pause on the whole thing. Halted in motion. Roland struggles to gather his wits, still fumbling around for the bat as the monster suddenly flies back as if yanked by an invisible thread and hits a tree nearly twenty yards away with a harsh _crack_. 

It crumples to the ground, letting out a high keening noise. 

A twig crunches behind him and Roland turns with his fists bared against the new threat — but it’s only a pair of kids. A blonde haired boy, ashen-faced with a white-knuckle grip on the handlebars of his bike, staring with wonder at his companion. A girl. 

The second kid lowers her hand, strange and weirdly adult as she frowns blankly up at Roland. He stares between her hand and the spot where the monster is slinking into the forest, knows it’s impossible but the irrational part of his brain is telling him she just threw the monster into thin air with _nothing but her mind._

Her shaved head is almost reflective in the moonlight, this kid that Hoyt is so desperate to find. He thinks he’s beginning to understand why. 

‘Where is my brother?’ she asks, careful and slow. ‘You said you would find him. My brother. Will.’

She wipes a dark line of blood from her nose. Waiting patiently for an answer.

Behind her, Mike Ardoin gives a little wave. 

Roland swallows.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently being back at uni does nothing for your free time and writing productivity. Who'd have thought? Thank you all for your patience, we're nearly there now :)

There’s about a million questions running through Roland’s head as he presses his ruined jacket to the gaping wound in Brett Woodard’s chest, unable to quit glancing up at the kid who had saved their asses with some telekinetic bullshit straight out of one of Wayne’s comics. He wishes she’d look away but there’s something blank about the girl’s eyes that suggests this isn’t the worst thing she’s seen in her short life, not by a long shot. Which unsettles him all the more.

Mike makes a weak gagging noise and stumbles back.

Roland can’t blame him: Woodard is torn up, blood pooling shockingly red out of the deep gash on his chest. It’s mesmerising, vivid where it coats his and Amelia’s hands as they kneel at the man’s side and attempt to staunch the bleeding. Woodard’s eyes are white slits in his dark face. Pale and rolling. 

‘We need to get him to a hospital,’ says Amelia shakily, which is very fucking obvious but Roland admires her practicality nonetheless.

‘Fayetteville’s closest,’ he says, swiping his wet hands on his shirt. ‘I’ll radio ahead for an ambulance, let ‘em know you’re comin’. Shit. Stay with us, buddy.’ 

Woodard groans.

They manage to haul him to his truck, prop him up in the passenger seat with his hands clutched to his front. Amelia dashes around to the driver’s side, gets in before she realises Roland isn’t hot on her heels. 

‘Aren’t you coming?’

‘You go. I gotta get to the Gate, see they make it out.’

‘You’re bleeding as well.’

’S’nothing. Keep pressure on that wound, remember? Now, go.’

So she goes in a spray of gravel and exhaust fumes, tired face a pale shape in the window as she turns the truck and gives one grave nod to Roland and the kids like it’s just the end of another long day teaching sixth grade. Leaving Roland covered in blood with the enviable responsibility of babysitting two ten year olds. Totally out of his depth. 

‘What was Ms. Reardon doing here?’ asks Mike, voice wobbly with hysteria.

‘Monster huntin’,’ Roland rasps. ‘What else it look like?’ The boy’s eyes are wide and shiny with acute horror. ‘Sorry, kid. Mike, right? Oughta be thankin’ you two for savin’ our asses.’

The kids stare. Roland is conscious he never answered the girl’s question in the rush to save Woodard’s life and she hasn’t said anything since. Looking at him like he’s as big a threat as the monster from another fucking world. 

‘I’m Roland,’ he says, and sticks his hand out. 

The girl flinches back as if he’s reaching for her throat and her eyes go wary and skittish as a colt. He feels an old, suppressed anger bubble up in his stomach. He knows the signs. An urge to find Hoyt and shoot him straight in his smug face rears its head, but he smothers it with practiced ease.

‘It’s okay,’ Mike says to the girl. ‘You do this, see? It’s to say hello to someone you don’t know.’ He takes Roland’s hand and shakes comically slow, demonstrating the gesture. ‘I’m Mike.’

Roland endures this for as long as necessary. ‘Hi Mike.’

‘See? You try.’

‘Hey now, I swear I don’t bite,’ says Roland, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. Which is hard while covered in blood and mud but the kid shyly extends her hand and takes his regardless. ‘It’s nice to meet you, miss.’

‘Julie,’ she says, so quietly he almost misses it. Small hand surprisingly firm in his. ‘My name is Julie.’

‘Alright, Julie.’ He tries for a reassuring smile. ‘I gotta go, but it don’t feel right leavin’ you here. Anyplace I can drop you off?’

‘We’re coming with you,’ Julie says in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘We want to find Will.’

He minces around it, briefly calculating the options but the night is short and the others still haven’t made it back yet. _Oh, fuck it,_ says the responsible part of his brain. Take the kids along for the ride, more likely they’ll end up saving his ass. Again.

‘Fine,’ Roland grunts. ‘But you do as I say, right? Could be dangerous.’

The kids nod. Roland gathers up a few things, gives the destroyed clearing one last look before making for his car with the kids on his heels. It looks like a bomb-site. He’ll probably be out here investigating the alarming amount of blood splashed out on the grass come morning — providing he makes it through the night without succumbing to a heart attack or something more fatal.

The roads are quiet, at least. So are the kids. They stare at him in the rearview mirror and he does his best not to stare back, trying to wrap his head around the way Julie had thrown the monster like it weighed nothing with one flick of her wrist. What the fuck.

‘I got bits and pieces of the story,’ he says. ‘But I don’t got it all. If I tell you what I know, you tell me what y’all’ve been up? Clear things up.’

‘…Okay.’

Roland gives them the shortened version, the bare bones of what led them to the clearing and the fight with the creature. More to keep himself awake rather than anything. If only he could stop and have a coffee or a shower…but there’s no time for that. The chicken plant awaits.

‘Only thing that I don’t fuckin’ get —’ he begins, then checks himself. ‘I mean. How’d you go about findin’ us tonight?’

Mike talks much too fast, a nervous tick to match the way he tugs at his forelock. Jittery. Kid ought to have been in bed hours ago. ‘Julie can look for people, it’s one of her…things,’ he explains. ‘She heard you talking about finding Will, said you were out by the tower.’

‘I saw you, and a man,’ the kid says quietly. ‘In the woods —’

And Roland doesn’t want to know where she’s going to go with _that_ , especially since he’s not too keen on airing his personal life in front of prepubescent Mike fucking Ardoin. 

‘That where you run into Mike?’ he asks, eyes on the road. There’s blood drying in his hair but that’s the least of his worries. 

The girl nods, curtly. 

‘She didn’t even have a _name_ when I met her.’ Mike leans forward and gestures at her arm. ‘She has, like, a tattoo, it says 07 — that’s what _they_ called her — but I thought a real name would be nice. First I thought of James Bond, but that’s 007 not 07 and not really a girl’s name, and then I thought maybe July? Like the seventh month? Which is kind of close to Julie I guess.’

Roland’s sorry he asked. He _uh-huhs_ in the appropriate places, gleaning some truncated story about Mike finding the girl in the woods and having to go on the run from Hoyt’s lackeys or something to that effect. It’s all pretty dramatic, a lot of biking away from vans and hiding in Mike’s basement.

‘So wait,’ he says, after a few rambling minutes. ‘When we talked to you at the beginning, y’all knew Will wasn’t dead?’

Mike’s face drops. ‘Julie hadn’t found him yet. It was scary. You looked like the bad guys.’

Roland tries not to throttle the kid, just nods and grinds his teeth. All this fucking time wasted, the whole rigmarole…

‘It’s my fault,’ Julie whispers into her sweatshirt collar. ‘The monster. Will.’

‘I’m sure it ain’t like that—’

‘It is!’ She actually sniffs. Perilously close to crying. ‘I wanted to…to meet him, but we didn’t know the Bad Men were close. But _it_ found us first.’

‘Shit, sweetheart,’ Roland murmurs, throat gone tight with a kind of pseudo-paternal panic. ‘You got nothing to be sorry for. Come on, now. It’s gonna be okay.’

He thinks wildly of holding Tom as he cried, but this is not that. This is a kid — Tom’s daughter? It’s going to take a while for him to wrap his head around that — and he’s driving, for Chrissake, and the kid looks like she’s capable of snapping the neck of any strange adult that tries to put a hand on her. A category to which he belongs. 

Julie swipes her eyes and glances out the window and, shit, he knows she’s not biologically related to the man but there’s something about the trembling restrained wet-dog misery bunched into her small frame that reminds him of an older Purcell.

‘Kid. Julie,’ Roland says gruffly. ‘You know I’m goin’ where the Bad Men are, right? To the Gate. Where your brother is. But I ain’t gonna make you come with if you don’t want to, understand?’

Julie nods, red-eyed and determined — and that look makes him think of Tom as well.

The radio crackles a few times, dispatch wondering what he’s doing off-duty calling ambulances in the middle of the night. Roland switches it off.

‘Can I…?’ says Julie haltingly, pointing at the radio. 

‘Knock yourself out, kid.’

She surprises him by solemnly taking a strip of cloth out of her pocket and tying it around her eyes.

‘You gotta put the channel to static.’ Mike’s face has gone even paler in the dark. ‘Are you sure you wanna do this? It didn’t work last time, remember.’

_‘Mike.’_

Mike shuts up.

It’s not the weirdest thing he’s been a part of all night, so Roland fiddles with the dial until he finds an empty station. Loud humming fills the car, crackling out of the speakers. Julie stiffens, intent, like she can hear something audible among the tuneless garbled noise. 

_Schkkkkk_ goes the radio. _Schhhhhhhhhcckkkk. Ckkk. Schhhhhck._

Roland rubs his temples and tries to concentrate on the road, tension headache building behind his eyes.

_Schhhhhhhhhcckkkk. Ckk…Jesus Christ….Schkkkk._

And Roland snap to attention at the wheel, because either he was hallucinating or Tom Purcell’s voice just came crackling from the radio. 

W _hat….fuck is…_ says Tom, static so thick it drowns out most of his words. … _Jesus Christ….fuck…that thing?_

‘Tom?’ Roland grabs the transmitter and slams down the button. ‘Tom, do you copy?’

‘He can’t hear you,’ Mike says. ‘Will couldn’t hear us either, not in the Upside Down.’

_…him? Oh God…that’s…get it off…Will?_

‘Fuck!’ Roland swears, a terrible frustration tearing him open at the sound of the upset quaver in Tom’s voice. Beyond his help. He grips the steering wheel and focuses on not driving them off the road. The lights of the energy plant glow red and white in the distance, glowing from behind a tall ridge of pine trees. 

Julie pulls the blindfold from her eyes and says, very calmly, ‘They’re alive.’

The radio stays resolutely silent the rest of the way there.

***

Roland’s not entirely sure how he would have gotten them into Hoyt Energy if Julie hadn’t been tagging along; his badge is able to get him only so far among the average bootlicker when he’s this disheveled and covered in dried blood. But as it is, the barrier opens all by itself to admit them and when he glances in the rearview mirror he sees Julie wiping a trickle of blood from her upper lip. Good kid. Taking the initiative. 

The place is eerily empty. The occasional neon light blinks from the tall silos above, but other than that the whole compound is cast in dark pools of shadow. A low industrial humming. Roland squints into the darkness, cursing himself for not thinking to keep a compass for himself.

But Julie tugs at his sleeve, points at a nondescript grey building in the distance. 

‘There,’ she says. Eyes as big and white as china saucers. ‘That’s it.’

Roland shoulders Woodard’s kit bag with a wince. ‘You two stay behind me. Let’s go.’

It takes him a few hits to break the glass door with the butt of Lucy’s battered shotgun; the glass cracks and finally buckles inward, leaving him free to snake an arm in and pop the door open — he’s been to enough B&E scenes to know the score — and step carefully over the shattered glass with his gun at the ready. An alarm is already ringing deep within the building, red lights whooping on and off above each darkened doorway. The kids follow silently behind him. He hopes neither of them are considering a future career in robbery because his terrible influence is doing nothing to dissuade the impressionable from a life of crime. 

Fuck it. 

No one appears to stop them. They pass rooms filled with control panels and wildly flashing lights; whole laboratories with maze-like titration systems and sparkling glassware; an echoey cafeteria with an espresso machine dripping coffee onto the floor in a slowly spreading black puddle. 

Roland yanks open a storage closet, gun raised, and Mike does a preliminary sweep with a flashlight and —

Harris James lets out a relieved laugh. ‘Oh thank God,’ he says from where he’s tied to the radiator, squinting up into the light with a disarming flash of teeth. ‘Those bastards put a gun on me and took my pass. We gotta —’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Roland says, and slams the door shut. Turns to the wide-eyed kids and grunts by way of explanation. ‘Bad man.’

‘Bad man,’ Julie nods in agreement, staring at him like he just handed her ten years worth of birthday presents. It makes him want to rip open the door again and kick Harris James in his pale, weaselly face. 

They abandon the door and head deeper into the lab, down staircases that ring hollowly with alarm. No threat in sight.

‘We close?’ asks Roland. The radio on his hip fires to life with a hiss that makes them all nearly jump clean out of their skin.

_‘Roland? Come in.’_

It’s Wayne, thank fucking Christ, voice loud and clear over the tinny alarm bells. Roland fumbles with the radio— momentarily distracted as they turn a corner— and bumps bang-smack into a ragtag group of people.

‘Fuck me!’ Roland yelps, right as the man holding a flashlight cries, ‘Jesus Christ!’ with similar gusto. 

‘Don’t shoot me, asshole.’ 

The man lowers the light and Roland blinks until the spots dancing across his vision coalesce to reveal Wayne Hays — sweat-rung, filthy, gun clutched tight in his hand and radio in the other — but definitely _alive._

‘You’re the one nearly gave _me_ a heart attack. Fuckin’ hell, Purple,’ says Roland, mouth dry, hands slick on the shotgun stock as he peers behind Wayne. ‘Who’s this?’

A black woman stares back at him, looking ready to buckle with shell-shock and exhaustion and the weight of the kid cradled in her arms. There’s gunk and muck smeared across their clothes and skin courtesy of the rotten other world, starved POW eyes looking out of dirty faces almost unrecognisable from the missing persons photos. The kid coughs. 

The one face he’s looking for isn’t there.

‘Folks we found on the way,’ Wayne rasps. ‘We gotta get movin’ man, think something picked up out trail. You didn’t kill it, did you?’

‘Just pissed it off some.’

‘Amelia?’ says Wayne, the unspoken question tangled up in the single choked word and Roland realises he’s just as terrified as he is, that the man’s jumped to the worst possible conclusion from the empty space at Roland’s side. ‘Is she..?’

Roland pulls the facts out of the churning pit of his head. 

‘Takin’ Woodard to the hospital. But she’s okay, man, she’s fine. Nearly finished that thing off for us.’

Wayne grips his arm and nods, muscle jumping in his jaw. ‘Thank God.’

A scuff of feet in the passageway beyond as a pale shape stumbles into the light. 

'What’s the hold up?’ grunts Tom Purcell, ashen faced and strained. Roland feels his heart leap at the sight of him, Tom’s name trapped under the lump in his throat. His airways are still seized shut, and maybe that’s a good thing: speaking now would give the game away. 

There’s a heavy pounding in his ears as Tom spots him and his expression hitches into something softer, his brow settling into a familiar furrowed pattern like he can’t quite believe his eyes. Like he wasn’t expecting Roland to fight a monster and come back in one piece. 

‘Roland? Tom breathes, then tacks on as a weak afterthought: 'Detective West?’ 

Roland sees now why Tom was lagging behind the rest — he’s laden down, a prone figure slung across his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, habitual appearance of being close to buckling under sadness and alcohol sloughing off him like mud as he stands with his back straight and arms braced around the limp form of what can only be —

‘You got him?’ Roland chokes, wanting to rush forward and feel Tom’s face in his hands, the solid weight on his shoulders. ‘Is he—?’

‘We got him,’ Tom says. A crooked grin cracks clean and quick across his face. ‘Roland. We got him.’

‘Fuckin’ hell.’

‘No time to go into the nitty-gritty,’ grunts Wayne. ‘We gotta get movin’. Come on.’

Roland hangs back as Wayne takes lead, falls into step beside Tom. There is the casual fact of Will’s real and grimy face bobbing against Tom’s shoulder as they make their way towards normality and open air. ‘Are you —?’ Roland says. ‘Are you okay?’

‘More’n okay.’ He’s unused to the sight of Tom’s smile. ‘Keep expectin’ to wake up and find this night’s all been a dream. Ain’t used to shit workin’ out.’

‘It’s real. I can help, you need remindin’.’ 

He doesn’t mean it like a come-on but Tom ducks his head and snorts into his collar. Yet his face quickly turns sober. 

‘There was this thing, Roland,’ Tom begins shakily, voice very low. ‘In his — down Will’s throat — _inside_ him. Thought for a moment he was dead. He looked dead. I don’t think I’d’ve had the courage to pull it out ‘case it killed him, but Wayne just —’ He mimes yanking something out by the roots. ‘Took a whole minute ‘fore he started breathin’, he was so fuckin’ cold.’

‘Shit, Tom. You got him. He’s goin’ to be okay.’ Roland puts a hand on Tom’s elbow, the briefest of touches. ‘You want me to carry him a bit?’

‘Nah, I got him.’

‘Good man.’

It seems important somehow, that Tom be the one to carry Will out.

The kids are trailing at his side, shooting up covert glances at the shape dangling over Tom’s shoulder. At Will. The boy’s face is waxen and smeared in thick viscous gunk, hair sticking to his forehead — but the shallow rise and fall of his chest is perceptible even from a distance. Not exactly a rosy picture of health, but pretty damn good for spending a week hiding from a bloodthirsty monster in a hell dimension with only God knows what to eat or drink. Tough kid. Both of them, the two Purcell children, survivors in their own way. 

They’re nearly at the first floor when Roland remembers about the storage closet. He signals Wayne to a halt and yanks the door open, uncuffs and re-cuffs James before he can so much as splutter a word in protest. 

‘Comms room, stat,’ Roland grunts, jabbing the shotgun into the man’s back. ‘Get movin’.’

‘None of this is in any way legal,’ says Harris James with a cocksure sneer. ‘You boys are goin’ to be in a world of shit once all this gets —’ 

_What the hell,_ thinks Roland and slugs James a neat rabbit-punch to the nose. His fist connects with the Head of Security’s face with a satisfying _crunch_ , and James lets out a howl as the blood leaks between his clutching fingers. 

‘Ain’t gonna ask twice, motherfucker. Comms room.’

It’s hard to miss the incredulous glee creeping onto Julie’s wide-eyed face as she watches James stumble forwards with his hands cupped to his nose. And if he seemingly trips over nothing and smacks his head into the metal doorframe, well, Roland’ll put that down as clumsiness from getting hit — not down to the faint trickle of blood that Julie quickly wipes on her sleeve. 

He shoots her a wink.

It takes a few minutes for James to lead them to the communications room; Tom keeps a cautious eye on Roland the whole while like he might raise the gun and finish Harris James off. Watchful and hesitant. 

‘Here’s your fuckin’ Comms Room,’ sniffs James, flourishing his cuffed hands at a locked door. ‘Think you broke my nose. Jesus.’ 

Roland leans past him and snags his keycard from his belt. The door pops open.

‘Get in there and call an ambulance,' Roland says. ‘Two ambulances. Say there’s been an accident, shit, I don’t care, just get ‘em here soon as possible. You want that kid’s blood on your hands more’n it already is?’

‘Whatever you say, _Detective._ ’ 

‘Tom, gimme a hand. Don’t trust this fucker not to try something.’

Tom gently lowers Will to the floor and comes to stand at Roland’s side. 

‘What d’you think I’m gonna do, call the police?’ grumbles James, but he lets Roland shove him inside without the customary show resistance. The door clicks shut behind them. Panels sit quiet in their housing, blips of light in a dark room illuminated by a row of static-filled screens. James plants himself down at the desk and flicks a few switches, pulling the mic towards him with a long-suffering resignation. 

‘Don’t think I’ve ever seen you hit anybody before,’ Tom murmurs. ‘You, uh. You do that often?’

Considering the amount of times Roland has seen Tom throw a punch over the course of their short relationship he doesn’t think the other man is in a position to judge. But then again, it’s less judgement and more flat curiosity that has Tom squinting at him with such interest. 

‘More than I’d care to admit before God and a court of law. Why, you lookin’ to report me?’

‘Just askin’,’ says Tom. His eyes keep catching on the scraped skin of Roland’s knuckles. ‘Lotta things you do look like they come natural. Like you don’t have to think about them.’ 

‘I don’t.’ 

As if to prove himself right, Roland steps in and kisses Tom. Feels Tom’s worn hands settle into place at the back of his neck. 

It’s just as good as it was the first time. Doesn’t matter that Tom’s clothes are thick with the cloying rotten air of the other place, that there’s blood as stiff and flaked as river clay coating Roland’s upper lip and chin; it’s just good to know that they’re both here, returned and breathing and _alive_.

Roland wants to take it slow — enjoy the moment, the firmness of Tom’s hipbone under his thumbs — but it seems Tom is learning fast how to take what he wants. He deepens the kiss, sinking a broken kind of moan into Roland’s mouth which somehow finds a mainline straight to Roland’s cock. 

‘Oh Jesus Christ,’ croaks Harris James. ‘What in the hell?’

They break apart, panting. Roland plants a boot at the edge of James’ chair and pushes: there’s a comically prolonged moment as the man scrabbles with his cuffed hands before tipping over onto the floor with a yelp.

_‘I have medical dispatch on the way to you, sir,’_ crackles the radio from where James knocked it over on his way down. _‘Do you need anything else from us?’_

‘No thank you, ma’am.’ 

Roland can taste fresh blood as he hangs up the line, some wound from earlier freshly cracked open. ‘Maybe they’ll have time to set your fuckin’ nose,’ he grunts to James as he pulls the man upright and out the door. 

Tom wipes his mouth and follows, ducks his head to hide a faint grin against his collar.

Wayne and the others snap to attention, eyes big and white in the dark, not even waiting for confirmation before starting down the hallway. Roland shoves Harris James after them and bends to help Tom with Will’s prone body; surprising how heavy a half-starved kid can be when there’s a need for haste. 

They make it out. 

Roland gets the door and Tom steps over the crushed shards of glass into the empty night, tilting his head up to breathe in the cool fresh air. 

‘I’ll only be happy with this place in the rearview mirror,’ mutters Wayne, but it feels safer outside away from the oppressive alarms and darkness. Wind in the distant trees.

The woman from Davis Junction has sunk to her knees, mouthing something like a prayer, the kid barely stirring in her arms. Tom crouches and lays Will down. He balls up Roland’s jacket and puts it under his son’s head, hands smoothing Will’s hair and torn shirt. It feels too personal to interrupt. Too intimate. 

Roland realises he’s never seen Tom as a father; just a bereaved one with endless pain cracking open before him. This man is different. A world away from the unhappy drunken mess Roland first met in Skip Rosenbaum’s office all those days ago. 

He’s not the only one unable to look away. 

Julie stands just a little way back, a worried frown flickering across her face as she looks between the two Purcell men, intent and serious as if undertaking a study on the foreign art of parenting. Roland doesn’t need powers to read her mind right now — she’s fighting one very specific decision. One that Mike makes for her.

‘Can you believe Will’s okay?’ he says, enthused. ‘And look, there’s your dad. Let’s go say hi.’

And, taking her by the hand, he tugs her toward Tom. 

A belated question about the odd number of middle schoolers hanging around Hoyt Every in the middle of the night is clearly on the tip of Tom’s tongue as the two unknown children catch his attention — but Mike manages to get there first. 

‘Mr Purcell?’ he says, cheeks burning red with embarrassment and the monumental importance of what he’s about to say next. ‘This is Julie.’

Tom stands and clears his throat, awkward, but lets the kid continue. Julie just stares.

‘She’s, uh, she’s your daughter,’ Mike says lamely. ‘Just so you know.’

There’s a moment of silence that stretches out for a small eternity. Roland thinks Tom might be rooted to the spot, staring down at the two children with the purest kind of confusion clouding his expression. His eyebrows just about fused together.

‘I don’t —‘ Tom says, then starts again. ‘That can’t —’

‘You would’ve been in Texas,’ says Roland, thinking of Lucy’s cracked plea _(don’t tell him)_ and reflects it’s kind of hard not to with the kid right in front of them, big doe eyes and all. ‘When Lucy had her, I mean.’

_‘What?’_

‘That boy of yours got a sister.’ Roland doesn’t know how else to put it. ‘Meanin’ you’re her father, best as I can tell. Best as anyone’ll want to know.’

Tom looks set to stand there spluttering for a while longer, but then Julie steps forward with the deliberate motion of a seasoned batter stepping up to the plate and formally puts out her hand the same way Mike taught her. Uncertain, hand propped out and wobbling in the empty air.

‘You —?’ croaks Tom, his voice so thick it’s almost inaudible, face gone pale and haggard. He lowers himself to a crouch before her. Stares intently at the faint fuzz of her cropped hair, freckled nose, the defiant jut of her lip. 

‘I’m Julie,’ the girl says.

Julie still has her hand held out but she doesn’t seem to expect him to take it, certainly not for Tom to lean past her and wrap his arms around her in a trembling hug. A brief flash of alarm crosses her face but Mike is grinning, mimes a gesture and thumbs-up as she realises this is something _good._ She slowly lifts her hands. Lowers them onto Tom’s back. 

‘Sorry,’ says Tom as he pulls away, wiping his face. ‘Shit. _Julie._ I’m Tom, but I guess you can call me —’

‘Dad,’ she says, plain and simple. Like she’s been waiting to use the word all this time.

Tom unclenches his fingers from his jeans and spreads them out on his knees, throat working hard. ‘That works too.’

‘Can I see Will?’

‘Sure,’ Tom says thickly, like it’s an effort to keep himself from breaking down right there on the tarmac. ‘He’s usually better at makin’ first impressions, but come on and have look. He’s, uh, not that well.’

Julie squats down at her brother’s side and peers into his slack face. ‘Hi, Will.’

Faint flicker of movement behind his eyelids. Julie leans in and puts a hand to his forehead and closes her eyes, head cocked as if listening to the distant hum of telephone wires and underground machinery.

Tom steps back to give her room and blinks hard. ‘Roland,’ he murmurs gently. ‘What the fuck.’

‘Couldn’t find the right time to bring it up.’ This sounds lame even to his own ears. Roland grips Tom’s elbow and squeezes, pulls him into the shadow of the metal silo above. ‘Look, it sounds crazy, but Lucy got knocked up that year you were offshore.’

‘Nothing new or crazy ‘bout that, apart from the fact she kept it,’ Tom says with a bitter laugh. ‘Shit, you met her, you oughta know.’

‘Yeah, except she was working at Hoyt’s at the time. Think they took it — Julie, that is — off her hands. Money prob’ly exchanged.’

‘Fuck.’ Tom stares at Julie’s back and covers his eyes with a shaking hand. ‘Roland, I don’t know how to do this. I fuckin’ _lost_ the one I already had. Think I oughta be thrown in jail instead of, y’know, gettin’ handed another one. And besides,’ he says with a weak laugh, ‘I don’t know _shit_ about girls.’ 

‘Son,’ Roland says, dead serious. ‘You think those children are gonna find somebody with the vaguest idea of what they’ve been through in fuckin’ foster care? Think there’s somebody out there who’d do more than go through a fuckin’ hell dimension to find ‘em? That what you think?’

‘Can’t even do right by myself, let alone them kids.’ 

‘I’d say you’ve started on that one already.’ Roland slides his fingers down to Tom’s wrist, lets all the gentleness in his voice carry the words. ‘You’re doin’ right by yourself right now, Tom. You feed that kid, teach her, treat her kindly— and you’ll be doin’ even better. You got this.’

Tom tips his head onto Roland’s chest and sighs. ‘Makin’ it sound like it’s light work.’ 

‘Ain’t so bad,’ Roland says, with one hand resting on his head like a benediction. ‘Takin’ care of someone, that is. Not that way.’

‘You say that like it happens a lot, Detective.’

‘Don’t reckon it does,’ Roland says, a hidden smile curling its way to where he has his face buried in Tom’s hair. ‘But it happens.’ 

He knows from experience, after all. 

Didn’t set out to let Tom get under his skin but somewhere along the line he had found himself unaccountably drawn to the tired droop of the man’s eyes and the flat-edged defensiveness of his words and his body, as helpless to keep himself from being at his side as he would be helpless not to smooth a dogeared page in a secondhand book, or run his hand over the crack in a lightening-struck tree. The sign of wear all the more compelling.

Part of it, he knows, is his own damn bullheadedness — the kind that as a kid had him choosing the runtiest kitten or the lamest horse, just to prove his father wrong about fool’s errands and idiot boys — but the other part of it has a soft underbelly and need of its own. He had steadied Tom because he wanted to feel Tom under him. He had held Tom up because he wanted to see the rawness that meant Tom needed him. On some level, he had wanted Tom before he knew Tom could possibly want him.

Care-taking without expectation, that’s what it was about; things that could surprise both sides growing up in the shared, exhausted moments in-between. Things like desire. Things like love.

‘You owe me the full story,’ Tom says, clearing his throat and gently freeing himself from Roland’s embrace. ‘About Julie. Long as we ain’t arrested come morning.’

Roland chuckles. 'I’d take slight umbrage if it came to that, bein’ a detective with a lost dead-boy in tow. Breakin’ and enterin’ notwithstanding.’

Hard to believe the past few hours were anything more than a fever dream standing where they are under the night sky, but then Wayne whistles and it all comes crashing back. The huddled survivors in need of medical attention. The madness of the situation.

‘We oughta keep movin’,’ Wayne calls. He’s crouched by the girl — Faith — with enough professional stiffness that Roland knows the kid must be in a pretty bad way. ‘Can’t waste time waitin’ for an ambulance to get to us.’ 

‘Copy that,’ Roland says. 

He makes to shoulder the shotgun and kitbag but pauses, a shiver unfolding along his spine as he stares into a puddle by his feet. At the compound lights silent and flashing in its reflection. Roland spins around, and sure enough, the lights are crackling above them, almost too faint to notice but building in short bursts that can mean only one thing.

‘Wayne!’ he calls, trying to mask the fear in his own voice. Not now. Not when they’re nearly home free. ‘We got company.’ 

‘What does that mean?’ cries Harris James from where he stands with his hands still cuffed and his nose bleeding uselessly down his front. ‘What’s going on —’ 

The jittering light plays across the planes of Wayne’s face as he tilts his head up and stares at the warning signal, realisation dawning with the widening of his eyes. ‘Fuck. Tom, Bernice —’ here addressing the fainting black woman, ‘—you better take the kids and get to cover. Stay the fuck outta sight, make a run for it soon as the coast it clear.’

‘He’s right,’ Roland says as Tom wheels around to argue. ‘Your kids need you, man.’ 

‘Fuck, Roland —’

‘I ain’t askin’. What’s the point, otherwise, if that boy don’t make it out?’

_‘Motherfucker,’_ chokes Tom, but he goes, leaving Roland with his hands already moving to load the remaining shells from his belt to the gun.

‘You got a plan of action?’ Roland asks. Wayne so dark in the night he looks almost blue apart from the intermittent red and white lights flashing on the sheen of his skin. He thinks briefly of Julie. Decides they’d be as bad as Hoyt if they used a kid as an offensive weapon. Ought to fight their own battles after all, their generation’s legacy.

Wayne spits on the ground and shrugs, soldierly and ready to a fault. 

‘Don’t die.’

‘Fuckin’ thanks.’ 

‘You two assholes mind explain’ what the hold up is?’ Harris James says, red hair slick and dishevelled but still managing to come across like any disgruntled customer on a holiday weekend. ‘Least take the cuffs off, it’s unconstitutional.’ 

‘I swear, if you end up gettin’ us all killed…’ Roland hisses, but snaps the cuffs off James’ wrists and shoves him towards the corrugated shed into which Tom and Bernice shepherded the children. ‘Go hide. Now.’

James doesn’t wait to be told twice. 

The lights are flashing faster now, fritzing in and out with a horrible hum. One shatters outward, sending glass flying. Roland spins around with his arms shielding his head — and when he turns back around the monster is standing tall and crooked in the middle of the tarmac before him. 

It tilts its head. Chittering weirdly, ugly lump of a face flexing open as if scenting the air. 

Roland realises — much too late — that the gash on his forehead is oozing into his eye, the scent of copper sharp and fresh in the air. _Fuck._ The thing’s hide is blistered and blackened in uneven patches from their earlier scrap, but it seems as agile and hungry for blood as ever.

‘You want this?’ he says, racking the shotgun. ‘Come on, bud.’ 

The creature drops to all fours and takes a few steps closer. Clicking and popping noises coming from its throat to the accompanying clack of claws on gravel. 

He’s barely aware that Wayne has left his side. Great. Just white meat on the menu.

‘What’re you waitin’ for, huh?’ Roland mutters, throat tight but hands reassuringly steady as he takes aim and shoots the monster a friendly warning hit between the eyes — if it had any eyes, that is. The bullet just ricochets off with a heavy thud and draws a growl from the depths of the creature’s maw.

It snaps its head back and forth, and he realises that it’s afraid. Waiting for another firework attack, perhaps, the charring and burning pain it only recently learned for the first time. He’s a threat.

‘Hey, Purple?’ he calls. ‘Bit late to be sayin’ this, but I just remembered there’s two grenades in Woodard’s kitbag. Get ‘em myself ‘cept I don’t wanna take my eyes off this thing.’ 

No answer.

The beast’s terrible mouth slowly opens with a slew of spittle and dank air, back legs bending into the beginnings of a crouch — right as Harris James decides to take his own chances and make a run for it like a world-class moron. 

‘Hey!’ Roland yells, in a vain attempt to recapture the monster’s attention but it’s already wheeling around to leap at the new threat. Harris James is bolstered by adrenaline and fear, but he’s not fast enough to outrun the thing on only two legs and it closes the distance between them in a matter of short bounds. Gunfire. Wayne shooting down at the creature from his new offensive position crouched on the shed roof, visible only from the muzzle flash, and that slows it a bit but it’s still closing in and Roland can’t believe he’s about to risk his life for a shit like James even as he fires his gun and runs directly at the thing with equal parts bravery and sheer stupidity. 

‘Hey, you no-eyed motherfucker!’ 

The last shell pops from the chamber and then he’s empty, nothing left to do but lob the shotgun right at the creature’s head, and _that_ gets its attention all right; it whips around and rises up to its full towering height. 

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ he’s yelling, practically waving his arms the same way the rodeo clowns would try and corral a bull away from a downed rider, letting Harris James crawl from where the monster knocked him to the ground. ‘What’re you gonna do? Huh? That’s it, you fuck, I’m right here.’ 

‘What are you _doin’?’_ comes Wayne’s voice, unmanned as ever he’s heard it. ‘Roland!’

'Improvisin’,’ Roland says.

The monster unleashes a maddened cry and then it’s on him — he hits the ground hard, breath forced from his lungs with the power of a horse-kick to the sternum, gravel in his back and his hair. Claws slashing at him. He rolls, sits up as it lunges again and he sees rather than feels the thing’s overlapping jaws coming snapping shut around his lower leg like a closed fist, and he knows in that moment that he is dead. It’s got him. There’s too many teeth and the teeth are in his leg; he screams as the pain hits him and the thing worries its head from side to side as if it’s trying to rip his leg clean off or bite straight through the bone. 

He kicks at its head with his free foot but it’s no use. 

Heart pounding in his chest fit to make him sick, kind of reminds him of his first rodeo, the nerves and exhilaration of it; him, a greenhorn, up against a big 1,700 pounder that jerked and bucked like a jackhammer and jarred him so bad he thought he might shatter his teeth in his skull. Same helpless feeling, same merciless wild animal. Maybe he never fell. Maybe he’s been riding the bull all his life only now he’s finally been thrown.

_Just got those boots last month,_ he thinks detachedly as the blood comes leaking down his jeans. Someone’s yelling. Roland figures it must be himself.

‘Roland!’ comes Tom’s voice, panicked. 

Roland catches a brief focused snapshot of Tom in motion to the left, hears the rapport of gunfire. The monster shakes the bullets off and snarls around the meat of his leg. Pissed off. Roland remembers he gave Tom his gun…like that was going to do any good, all six bullets as useless as his own wordless screaming. Wayne is there too, shooting straight for the head and heart in good old academy fashion. 

There’s something digging into Roland’s side. He fumbles in his pocket and the blade of Wayne’s straight razor opens easily in his hand —it seems a lifetime ago when he had pocketed it in the man’s neat bathroom — and he doesn’t think exactly, just throws himself upward and stabs the razor straight into one of the overlapping folds of the monster’s head. 

It lets out a high keening shriek. Something in his leg _rips._

Roland falls back limply onto the ground, barely aware that the thing has released him and is backing away with the polished handle jutting from its ugly head. He glances down. Sees a flash of white among searing red, lapping hot and horrifying from the ruined meat of his leg. 

‘Oh, fuck,’ he pants.

Tom is at his side in an instant, scrabbling for purchase, ragged and raw with fear. He looks younger than Roland’s ever seen him. 

‘Jesus, oh God,’ Tom says, and starts unbuckling his own belt — Roland had always imagined tugging it open himself when it came down to it, not that _this_ is that kind of moment — and cinches it tight around Roland’s upper calf with trembling hands. ‘You gotta stay still, Roland, gotta try stop the bleedin’.’

‘I’m tryin’ to elevate the wound,’ Roland mumbles. ‘First responder 101. Thought I told you to stay with the kids.’

The creature is still upright, Wayne hitting it with all the firepower he’s got left. It feels very unreal. Less real than an otherworldly monster should.

Tom tugs Roland’s leg into his lap and blanches as blood continues to seep through the tattered remains of Roland’s jeans. ‘Hey man.’ He might be crying. ‘Roland, stay with me.’

‘Look like I’m goin’ somewhere?’

‘Don’t you die on me now, asshole. I can’t. You don’t get to do that.’

‘Okay.’ His head feels woozy. There’s a blackness creeping up on him. Pulsing behind his eyes. Tom is definitely crying and it doesn’t feel right, of all the things that have made Tom cry Roland has never been one of them — he doesn’t want to be responsible for the painful hitching in Tom’s chest or the tears leaving track-marks through the dirt on his face. ‘Hey. ‘M proud of you, man.’

‘Don’t. Don’t do that.’ 

His vision is siding in and out of focus but he makes out the shape stepping from behind the shed, stark outline, buzzed hair. Julie. _No place for a kid,_ Roland thinks, right as the monster turns towards her with an unerring deliberation. It knows her in the same way it knew him. It’s angry.

‘Go away,’ Julie says with flat command, voice barely carrying. ‘Leave us alone.’ 

The monster bares its fangs and lets out a roar that fills the air with rage and defiance and unearthly terror, resonating through Roland’s fillings and the exposed bone of his leg. He screams too.

But Julie just lifts a small hand.

‘I said, leave us _alone.’_

The creature crouches, ready to spring — and is lifted neatly from the ground to hover in the air before Julie. Her face young and terribly old all at once, a delivering angel of wrath, every muscle of her body tense and trembling with effort as she twitches her wrist and the monster goes flying for the second time that night, crumpling the metal of a nearby silo. Pinned against it and helpless to withstand the barrage of objects Julie sends its way. Still vicious and howling. 

‘How?’ chokes Tom, hair haloed wildly around his head to match his own bewilderment. ‘I don’t —’

‘Shock,’ Roland slurs, lightheaded. ‘See?’

Then Wayne is stepping forward and holstering his gun, reaching for something at his feet. Woodard’s abandoned kitbag. He straightens clutching a spherical object in his hand, righteous and tall with his jacket open and windblown in the night breeze. _Purple Hays._

‘Step back,’ he tells the kid, clearly taking the telekinetic powers in his stride. She obeys. He’s using his sergeant-major voice after all, the same one he used when Roland and he were first introduced all those months ago. His _don’t-fuck-with-me_ voice. Roland had known right then Wayne Hays was going to be a good partner and so he had been. The very best.

Roland wishes he’d had the chance to tell him.

‘Go to hell,’ Wayne says, then pulls the pin and throws the grenade overhand — Wayne Hays the ace pitcher, a life that could have been — and it drops straight into the creature’s gaping catcher’s mitt of a mouth. 

Twin explosions rip the air. 

The grenade goes off, sure, but so does the 40-foot silo filled with a lethal mixture of methane and shit — a fireball rips upwards, sending hulks of metal and debris flying out along with a shockwave that knocks Wayne and Julie to the ground like skittles, Julie with her hand out to stop the steel shards from tearing them apart. The air burns. Blast leaving Tom flattened over Roland with their noses touching and eyes tight shut, back shielding him from the chunks of fire and chickenshit and monster flesh that rain down on the ground around their tangled bodies.

Roland coughs. His ears are ringing, nausea bubbling up in his throat, everything dragging out in slo-mo as he shakes the shock from his head. 

‘Tom?’ he says, voice distorted and unintelligible to his own ears. Half expecting Tom to fall aside with a shard of metal lodged in his chest — yet he finds the skin under his shaking fingers surprisingly solid and whole.

Roland starts to cry. 

‘Roland!’ Tom’s yelling, voice breaking on the first vowel as he cups Roland’s face in his thin hands. ‘Jesus Christ, you see that?’

‘Kinda hard not to,’ Roland mutters.

There’s a distant whoop of sirens as the darkness rises up to cover him as easily as a mother wraps a blanket round her child, banishing the pain and fear to a distant worry that grows hazier by the second as clarity slips away from his grip. He lifts a hand and drops it to his side. Finally passes out in Tom’s arms. 

***

He wakes up in the ambulance to strangers holding him down, cutting away the denim and leather from his leg like it’s somehow important to expose the meat of him. Unnatural. Nubs of bone poking out from the skin that grind together when they hit a bump in the road. 

Roland faints again.

***

They have him strapped to a gurney at some point and people keep fucking blinding him with pencil torches and ignoring the frankly inspired string of curses that tumble out of his mouth with no filter. He wishes Wayne were here to take notes; man always appreciated a well worded insult and here Roland is giving them out for free. Fuck.

‘Hey,’ he mumbles as they wheel him down a corridor and a crew of doctors pass the other way with Will Purcell laid out on a trolley like his smaller mirror image. ‘Kid used to be dead, y’know that?’

No grave going to hold that boy down, not after all this time and suffering. Roland won’t allow it. He wishes he could say the same for himself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for ending this on a downer / cliffhanger but let's just say that the lives of Will, Tom, Woodard, (hell, even Harris James) all demand their pound of flesh. Sorry Roland!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has read and commented during the past few months, it means a lot and I've enjoyed writing with you guys in mind. It's been a blast!

He loses the leg.

The morphine-dreams fill his head with a dense fog that conjures up unfocused visions from God-knows-where — the black silhouette of his childhood home lit up and eaten by fire; a tree moaning and shaking under high wind; unbroken horses leaping with their hooves flashing and thudding around him in a great panicked rush — until he finally wakes from the nightmares convinced that something is crouched and gnawing away at his foot. 

It’s unbearably bright in the room, sterile and sharp in his nostrils, and Roland knows the word for it but he can’t think of the context. It doesn’t matter. He shouldn’t be here. A chill sweat breaks out on his face the instant he tries to sit up, but that flash of discomfort is nothing to the hard knot that solidifies in his stomach the longer he stares at the dip in the blankets where the lower half of his right leg ought to be. It’s all wrong. He wiggles his toes but there’s no movement, nothing stirs so he rips the blankets off the bed with shaking hands and sees that his knee now juts into the dead-end of a wrapped stump and nothing else.

This discovery makes him pass out. 

When he wakes again the room is darker and Wayne is sitting in the plastic bucket chair at his side, idly scanning a newspaper and looking good. Clean and whole.

‘Hey, hoss,’ Roland rasps, throat rough like he’s been smoking straight from the tailpipe of an eighteen-wheeler. ‘How’s the horoscope lookin’?’

A grin breaks out slow and certain across Wayne’s face as he meets Roland’s eyes. 

‘Fuck off, man,’ he says. ‘Like I believe in any of that shit. How’re you feelin’?'

‘Like I got my leg ripped off,’ Roland replies, pointedly not looking down the bed. Makes him queasy to contemplate. ‘Drugs are pretty good though, don’t get me wrong, but I’d be a whole lot happier if they stopped knockin’ me out every time I start screamin’ about it.’

‘Heard you cussed out a surgeon when they were set to operate,’ Wayne says. ‘Upset the good Christian nurses.’

Roland swipes a hand across his rumpled hair and sinks back onto the pillows with a grunt. 

‘They got me so fucked up you could tell me I sucked his dick n’ I’d believe you,’ he slurs, and he must be high out of his mind because there’s no way he’d ever say that to Wayne on a normal day at the office, not even drunk out at the junkyard or hopped up on bennies on late-night patrol. 

Wayne just folds the paper and lets out a snort. 

‘Nearly hit that surgeon myself, if Amelia hadn’t stopped me. They wouldn’t let me see you were okay. Motherfuckers.’

Roland decides to let the drugs do the talking; maybe it’s the only time he’ll ever get away with it and Wayne is his one good friend in the world so what the hell, he opens his mouth and says:  ‘I love you, man.’

Wayne face goes still. He blinks a few times, hard. Reaches out and squeezes Roland’s forearm with one hand. 

‘Love you too, bud,’ he says quietly. ‘Fuckin’ had me scared like it was the jungle all over.’

‘I’m flattered. You think you’re losin’ your touch?’

‘Asshole.’

‘Yeah, yeah, watch who you’re talkin’ to. Cripples got rights too, you know.’

The thought of it deadens the conversation. Wayne rubs a hand over his hair and grimaces helplessly at the spot where Roland’s leg ought to be. ‘They told me it’s not like you ain’t gonna walk again, just gonna take a while,’ he says steadily. ‘All the boys comin’ home from Nam made a pretty big market for that kind of stuff.’

‘Fuck, what’d I need to walk for anyway?’ Roland shakes his head. ‘They’re gonna stick me behind a desk first chance they get. If we still got jobs, that is.’

‘I sorted things.’ Of course he did: Wayne the fixer, lying to the higher-ups through his teeth. ‘Savin’ a missin’ kid along with injury sustained rescuin’ civilians from the unforeseen explosion at the chicken plant? Gonna end up givin’ you a medal.’ 

So-called good news, but it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

‘I don’t want a fuckin’ medal. I want —’ and here Roland has to turn his head away and stare at the peeling wall beside him until the itch in his eyes fades to a dull ache and he continues: ‘I want to go to sleep and wake up with this behind me. I want to walk out of here on my own steam. I _don’t_ want you to fuckin’ look at me like — like —’

‘It’s okay,’ Wayne says. He’s still got his hand on Roland’s arm. ‘You’re okay, man. Only thing I’m lookin’ at is that ugly-ass beard you got goin’ on.’

Sure enough when Roland brings a hand to his face he finds it thick with bristles long enough to drag his fingers through, like petting a goddamn dog. He scratches, horrified, and Wayne stifles a laugh into his collar. 

‘Just how long have I been out?’ 

***

Wayne brings him an old electric razor that evening, along with a bag of clothes from his apartment. (He suspects Amelia helped. There’s a book smuggled in with his t-shirts, a battered pulp fiction untouched since his days as a beat cop, its spine broken enough for her to guess it was one he had once loved. She was right.) 

It means more to him than he can bear to say. He’s too tired to shave and the morphine keeps him unmotivated to try, but he balances the book open in his lap and manages to make his way though the first chapter before sleep drags him under. 

When he wakes up it’s dark and his knee is throbbing like a piston made in hell. He’s desperate for a cigarette.

Nothing but the light beep and hiss of machinery to distract him from the sudden swell of misery that tangles his thoughts and sets his heart pounding. He swipes at his eyes. Feels the life stretching before him taking a plunge into some dark cavern, derailed, the other comfortable futures that could otherwise have been his falling with it — but it’s the idea of being helpless that really churns his stomach. He can’t even get up to take a piss. Let alone drive a car or run a mile or fuck standing up or any of the basic shit he’s taken for granted for three fucking decades.

‘So what,’ he says aloud. ‘Big fuckin’ deal.’

There’s a shuffle of movement to his right as someone shifts awake, a sharp intake of breath.

‘Roland?’

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Roland hisses, but strangely enough his heart quits galloping in his chest as he makes out the figure sitting in the chair beside him. ‘Tom. You just about scared the shit outta me.’

‘How long you been awake?’

‘How’d _you_ get in past visitin’ hours?’

‘I been comin’ down when Will’s asleep,’ Tom says, fumbling with the bedside light. It clicks on with a bloom of harsh fluorescence that he quickly angles towards the ground, illuminates his hands translucent red. ‘Not like you’re ever conscious, otherwise you’d know that. Shit.’

The book in Roland’s lap slips to the floor with a soft thud.

Tom bends and picks it up, runs his fingers down the spine and flips open the cover. He looks tired in the low light. Purple shadows still smudged under his eyes — but not as defined as those from the early days in the investigation.

‘Hey,’ Roland says. ‘Is Will okay? How’re you holdin’ up’?’

‘Think I oughta be askin’ you that.’ Tom squints into Roland’s face, clearly thinking of having Roland’s leg in his lap and his blood leaking all over them both, unable to stop the memory from taking up space in the here and now. He glances down at the blankets and winces. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Half-price boots from now on,’ Roland grunts. ‘That’s something.’

Tom leans back into the chair with a sigh. 

‘Some guys I knew lost hands, lost arms in accidents back when I was workin’ the factory floor,’ he says slowly in that dry way of his. ‘Fucked ‘em up bad. Took to drinkin’ or gettin’ high to make it though the week; I thought, shit, if it ever gets I can’t work to make a livin’ I oughta shoot myself. Save everyone the misery.’

‘Jesus, Tom.’ 

‘Yeah, but what I’m sayin’ is I don’t think that anymore. Those guys locked themselves in, didn’t want to feel anything ‘cept their own misery and the injustice of what they lost.' The flat quaver in his voice restraining something too important for words. ‘You dragged me out from feelin’ that.’

Like losing half a leg was in anyway comparable to losing a child. Roland shakes his head and mumbles, ‘Don’t gotta worry about me. I’ll get by.’

Tom tilts his head down to the folded knot of his hands. ‘What I mean is, I owe you is all.’ 

The way he says it unhooks the ache in Roland’s chest, and he realises that despite the stitched flap of skin hiding the sawed-down bone of his leg he is incredibly _lucky._ Lucky to be alive; lucky to have Tom by his side right here and now; lucky to have cheated the fate that seemed a forgone conclusion to the Purcell case. No death, no buried kids, no regret stabbing his chest and nights spent with nothing but a bottle and the same question for company: _what if I could have done more?_

‘I ain’t askin’ for anything,’ Roland murmurs. ‘Whatever you want to give? That’s fine.’ 

He reaches out and fumbles a grip on Tom’s shirt, loose and longing and Tom comes over easy, hand coming to rest on Roland’s chest and mouth meeting his. Someone sneezes a littleways down the ward. Roland sinks his tongue into Tom’s mouth, lets himself enjoy the way Tom’s eyes flutter shut like he can’t bear to face the closeness of it too long, even in the dark. 

They break apart. Tom hums, brings his palm up to cup the scratchy beard gracing Roland’s upper lip and jaw. 

‘That’s goin’ to take some gettin’ used to,’ he says, rubbing away the raw feeling on the back of his hand. ‘Hm.’

‘Don’t want it there long enough to be a fixture,’ says Roland. ‘Got a razor in my bag you want to help a man out.’

‘You really that bothered about bein’ unshaven?’ Tom digs out the electric razor and plugs it in, regards Roland with a raised eyebrow. ‘This one ain’t much use against any monsters, though, more’s the pity.’ 

‘Weren’t intentional. Just had it on me.’ 

‘If you say so,’ Tom says, folds a pillowcase under Roland’s chin and leans in carefully, intent as if holding welding torch and tools as he flicks on the lowest setting. ‘Hold still, okay?’ 

Roland keeps his chin angled up and steady. Watches Tom work: the brief touch of fingers on his skin, the buzz of the razor against his cheek, Tom’s face close to his. Thinks of how long it’s been since he let a man touch him like this. It feels like relief, the intimacy of it after being examined, cut open, prodded like a piece of meat by half the doctors in the goddamn hospital. Prickles of hair falling ticklish against his neck and ears. 

‘I was thinkin’,’ Tom says after a while. ‘Thinkin’ maybe I might find someplace else, someplace that ain’t _that_ house. Goin’ to let Will out in a week, maybe less. Figured we could all use a fresh start. Julie too.’

Roland _hmms_ noncommittally. Lets Tom work at his sideburns and tries to ignore the disappointed feeling twisting his stomach. Shit, if he was Tom he’d want out too, after everything.

‘Wayne said Hoyt’s agreed to leave us alone, long as we don’t say anything ‘bout where Julie come from. Said I could live with that. Got an envelope too, shit, just about more n’ I make in a year — an _apology_. Wanted to throw that blood money right back at him, but then again…this place I found’s real nice. Got a garden, not too many neighbours. Could be what we need.’

‘Don’t got to explain yourself to me,’ mumbles Roland. 

‘It’s a one story.’ The razor buzzes but Tom’s halted his trimming, poised mid-way but not set to move. ‘Got a spare bedroom and all.’

‘Sounds nice.’

Tom nods. ‘It is.’ 

‘So. When’re you movin’?’

‘Soon as I can get a van,’ Tom says. ‘The kids are okay with it.’ 

He switches off the razor. 

There’s a definite argument to be made against this: the silence kills the conversation with one easy blow, and it’s dark but Roland can see the embarrassed flush that makes its way across Tom’s ears and cheeks as they sit there and stare at each other. He wishes Tom’d just hurry up and tell him it’s the end of the line. Man has a family to think about after all. Responsibilities: things other than waiting around for Roland to claw his way back to health on one working leg.

‘Reckon Julie’d be happy anywhere that ain’t a basement,’ Roland says at last, with a grim attempt at humour. 

Tom frowns. 

‘I mean. Sure,’ he says. ‘But it’s good. She likes you.’

‘She ain’t exactly met a lotta people.’

‘Jesus, Roland,’ Tom groans, and buries his face in his hands. ‘I’m not askin’ a whole lotta people to move into my fuckin’ house. Just the one. So, far as I can reckon, it’s kinda relevant Julie don’t want to snap your neck first chance she gets.’ 

‘What?’

A stab of pain lances his leg as he shunts himself upright on both elbows, the words hitting him like an unexpected rockfall. In the interrogation box Roland’s got a word for anything, ready to rally the ball back to baseline and watch the perp sweat — but here he’s the one left stunned with surprise. Feeling a shade too sluggish and stupid to even wonder why he couldn’t see it coming after questioning Tom more than a dozen times over the investigation, back when the workings of the man’s life seemed painfully cut and dry.

But then again, all those times Tom never asked him to move in with him.

Tom’s hands come flying down from his face, voice rough and cracking. ‘What d’you think I’m tryin’ to —?’ 

It’s not an easy thing, Roland knows, for Tom to ask for something that he wants.

‘I dunno, man, just. You’re sayin’ you want to put me up in your guest bedroom?’ It’s the morphine, he swears, that has him like this.

‘Didn’t realise you had plans. You wanna do this shit by yourself you can, I ain’t your keeper, just figured since your apartment’s on the fifth floor…’ Tom straightens, stiff and resigned. ‘Ain’t like you need anybody lookin’ after you. It’s fine.’

There’s an ache Roland’s chest that’s not just a craving for a smoke as he imagines the house out in Greenland, the fucking garden and lack of stairs. Room for him to get better. Room for a fucking dog, cat, chickens, whatever completes the stupid pastoral scene playing out in Technicolor in his head.

‘Never said that. Fact I think I’d give a couple of fingers for it,’ Roland says. ‘Don’t know if you noticed but I recently lost a leg. And half my goddamn brain, apparently.’

He tangles his fingers into Tom’s collar and Tom looks up at him with a naked kind of disbelief, but Roland is sincere. He wants to get this part right. 

‘Are you really askin’? Cause I ain’t sayin’ no.’

The stubble on Tom’s throat jumps as he swallows, nods. Waiting for the other shoe to drop.

‘So that’s settled then,’ grunts Roland. ‘My lease lasts till Christmas but don’t reckon I’ll get round to packin’ it up before then anyway. Only need a few things. Clothes. Some casefiles, few keepsakes. Got an iron skillet that’s pretty damn indestructible —’ 

But he stops his inventory here, because Tom has taken his face in both hands and is kissing him all over again and Roland gives into it with relief because, shit, he’s just realised that there’s very little in his life that counts outside this very moment apart from the few people that bothered to visit him in his hospital bed — of which Tom is one.

‘Think you missed a spot,’ he breathes.

Tom just cracks a smile and rubs his thumb down the light stubble gracing Roland’s jaw. ‘Looks better that way,’ he explains, and Roland’s content to take his word for it. 

He’s conscious of the thin partition separating them from the rest of the ward as he drags Tom onto the bed, but no one stirs as Roland slings an arm across Tom’s shoulder to keep him in place. Revels in the heavy comfort of Tom’s legs straddling his good side. Head resting against his heart. There’s worse ways to spend a night, he thinks, and the nights to come for that matter.

Roland murmurs, ‘About that guest bedroom…’ but loses the thought as sleep comes for them both.

***

The days slip by in a haze of boredom underscored by the constant ache in his leg. Roland marks time by daily gruelling sessions of physical therapy and the chime of the evening news from the wall-mounted television at the end of the ward, but even that doesn’t hold his interest much. More often than not the pictures on the screen are all too familiar, cycling between the tragic accidental Hoyt Energy explosion and the dead boy come back to life. Sometimes he sees his own face. Hoyt appears only once, to voice an apology for the delays to usual service and to assure the public that business will continue as usual. 

_As usual_ doesn’t have the same ring as it once did. His leg and the whole cover-up about the case —the painted, agreed-upon veneer hiding the Hoyt’s rotten underbelly and the truth about Will’s disappearance that leaves a bitter taste in his mouth the longer he thinks about it — made sure of that.

The day he’s due to be discharged Roland manages to wheel himself to the outdoor smoking area with the sole purpose of breaking open the pack of Luckies some sympathetic nurse had folded into his laundry. Tried to stop by at Woodard’s room but the man had had visitors. Brief glimpse of two kids and a woman gathered around the bed, Woodard like Christ crucified with his long hair trailing out on the pillows. Awake and close to smiling as Roland’s ever seen him.

He breathes in the smoke and shivers as the bitter wind tugs at his robe, tries to ignore how the weather’s gotten miserable in the weeks since Will went missing; rain, frost, the whole wintery shebang. It’s the only thing that makes him miss Texas. 

‘Detective West?’ comes a voice, and Roland nearly fumbles his cigarette.

There’s a black couple halted before him, a kid at their side and another splashing in the puddles towards the parking lot. The mother steps forward. He recognises her from Davis Junction: the church woman with missing girl and the dog that ruined his good slacks. 

‘Ma’am,’ he says, tilting his head. ‘Mr. Wade.’

‘Thought I told y’all to call me Camila,’ Camila says. ‘Save your _ma’ams_ and _misters_ for folk that’d get better use from it.’ 

He takes one last drag and stubs out the smoke. ‘Yes ma’am.’

She laughs and clutches the kid to her side, forcing the girl to quit staring at the bandaged stump poking out from his sweatpants and blink up at him instead. ‘When we so sorry to hear about what happened,’ says Camila. ‘Weren’t we, honey? We ain’t stopped prayin’ just cause our little girl’s back, oh no; there’s still plenty which the good Lord can give us His helping hand. We’re thinkin’ of you.’

‘That’s good of you,’ Roland says, unaccountably stiff-backed. He’d rather the good Lord give him a helping _leg_ rather than hand, but he doesn’t think this would go down well. He nods instead.

‘Oh, it’s got nothing to do with that,’ Camila says. ‘Anyway, we only stopped cause we’d been hopin’ to convey our thanks before we took Faith home. It’s down to you we got our child back.’

‘Weren’t all me. Wayne Hays is the one you oughta be thankin’, my partner. He’s the one that found her.’ 

‘We already saw Detective Hays,’ Curtis Wade interjects, looking a great deal more inclined to friendliness standing here with his daughter’s hand clutched in his own than on his own doorstep with that damned dog. ‘He wasn’t the only one there that night, by his account. And Faith’s.’

Jesus, he hopes the kid didn’t see him get his leg ripped to shreds, although she looks pretty traumatised regardless. Roland winces. ‘We got lucky,’ he explains. ‘More’n we had any right to be.’

Camila frowns down at him, cocks an eyebrow. ’I’m not gonna pretend everything’s praise-Jesus,’ she says. ‘Not when there’s others still ain’t found their kids and never may. But regardless of that, you listened. That meant something.’ 

There’s a lump wedged in his throat at this but he ignores it, addresses Faith with all the good charm he can muster.

‘You gettin’ out today? Me too,’ he grins. ‘Before ‘em hospital dinners finish me off.’

The girl’s face remains studiously serious, but Camila cracks a smile and pats her daughter’s shoulder. ‘It’s early but they think gettin’ out today’ll raise her spirits,’ she says. Then, when Roland doesn’t get it: ‘It’s Thanksgiving. Didn’t you know?’

He does the mental math and comes up on a Thursday, realises she’s right. He’s been out of it so long she could’ve told him it was Christmas and he’d have to take her word for it: just another pill to swallow from his travelling pharmacy of painkillers.

‘Oh, yeah. Sure thing.’ 

Tom hadn’t said anything about it last time they saw each other, and Roland’s not that big on holidays, so he shrugs and pretends to share their good cheer and the thought of a cooked dinner. Doesn’t even know if Tom _can_ cook. Though with Lucy’s irregular hours, he’d probably have had to do his share of it, making up dinners and school lunches while his wife made her way around town. 

Rolands stomach rumbles. 

‘Goin’ home to family?’ Camila asks. 

And because he’s not in the mood to prolong the conversation any further, Roland nods as he aims the wheelchair towards the sliding doors beyond. Let them imagine where he’s headed, not like it matters. Tom will be here in an hour. 

‘Yeah,’ he says, hiding a grin in the upturned collar of the coat slung round his shoulders. ‘Family. Something like that.’

***

There’s a buzz around the place, now he knows to look for it. Whole families laden with tinfoiled trays and desserts descending on their sick loved ones with holiday cheer, the ill no doubt thankful for a reprieve from the overcooked mulch that ordinarily passes as dinner. Roland watches them arrive with wry goodwill. Unhooks the payphone from the wall and jams it up against his ear as he levers himself up with one hand to feed in his remaining loose change, depresses the heavy metal numbers without looking. 

Amelia picks up on the fifth ring. _‘Wayne Hays’ phone,’_ she answers, clear as a bell. _‘Can I take a message?’_

‘He got you doin’ secretary work already?’ Roland says, leaning forward to scratch at the thick bandages. ‘Damn. Better watch yourself else he ain’t gonna let you leave.’

She lets out a smothered laugh. _‘I’m not looking for the door quite just yet,’_ she says. _‘Although…’_

‘If you’re goin’ to tell me he talks in his sleep I already know, spent more’n enough all-nighters listenin’ to him goin’ on like he’s on Johnny Carson. That’s a dealbreaker for you, huh?’

_‘He went out yesterday with his hunting gear and came back with fresh turkey.’_ Roland snorts at the mild horror in her lowered voice. _‘Says he’s not going to sit there and eat a Thanksgiving dinner with no meat in it — and I don’t really mind, I just wish he’d gut it someplace other than the kitchen table.’_

‘Oughta be glad it wasn’t a wild boar. That’d be more his style.’ 

The line clicks and Wayne’s voice echoes down the line: _‘Hey,’_ he says. _‘Don’t think I can’t hear you two talkin’ shit.’_

‘Son, I could’ve been the Attorney General ringin’ to congratulate you on your fine job blowin’ up the chicken man,’ Roland points out. ‘I’m seein’ now why you got your woman screenin’ your calls, if that’s how you say hello.’

_ ‘Who else’d Amelia be talkin’ all cosy to?’  _

‘Fuckin’ JWs, I don’t know,’ he says, as two old ladies hobbling by shoot him identical disapproving frowns. ‘Anyway, all this to say they’re lettin’ me out — just so you don’t go into full tracker mode case you visit and can’t find me anyplace.’

‘ _Like you’d get very far on foot.’_

‘Fuck you. Singular foot, very funny. Amelia you better be takin’ notes for when I sue this asshole for discrimination. I could do with a laugh.’

He misses Wayne’s predictably affronted reply as the sliding doors pull open to admit a gust of chill air along with Tom Purcell, red-faced with his shoulders wedged up around ears from the cold. The frown on his face lifts as he spots Roland. Roland raises a hand.

‘Here, I got to go —’ Roland says, cutting across Wayne’s pigmentation go-to. ‘If I was in the habit of bein’ sentimental I’d say I’ve never been as thankful to be partnered to such a massive asshole. That I’m grateful to know you both. But I ain’t; so Purple, you can go fuck yourself.’ 

_ ‘Right back at you, man.’ _

_‘Roland,’_ says Amelia. _‘Take care of yourself, okay? If you need anything —’_

‘—I’ll make sure to call someone else, got it. Happy Thanksgiving,’ Roland says. He slots the receiver back on the hook right as Tom comes to a halt in front of him, hands jammed into his pockets and eyebrows raised. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey,’ Tom says. Plucks a cold cigarette filter from between his teeth, not exactly smiling but something set easy in his bearing. The steady way he holds Roland’s gaze like something heavy on his skin. ‘You ready?’

‘Yeah. Just makin’ some calls. Bag’s upstairs.’ Roland wheels himself toward the lift with Tom half a pace behind. ‘Rang my ma earlier, she cried the whole fuckin’ time when I told her, said what was the point me quittin’ the rodeo if I was goin’ to end up some cripple anyway? I told her it sounds like her God got a sense of humour. Not that she appreciates it.’

The lift slides open.

Tom says, ‘My parents wouldn’t believe me til I put Will on the phone,’ with an exhale that might have been a laugh. His hand coming to rest on Roland’s shoulder. ‘Guess we got a knack for it. Bringin’ old folks to tears.’

They don’t make it out clean, not until the on-duty nurse explains how to wrap Roland’s leg properly to Tom in full detail, demonstration included. Tom takes it all in seriously. Doesn’t flinch at the jarring stapled fold of skin; just nods in the right places and _mm-hmms_ in the rest, tucks the leaflets into Roland’s leather-handled travel bag along with the full orange prescription tubes and assures her that they’ll call if there’s any trouble. Tucks the crutches under his arm. 

Then it’s hospital corridors and open air, wheelchair juddering over tarmac and the sky blank and grey above.

‘Fuck, it’s cold,’ Roland says. 

‘Kids have the heater on in the car,’ Tom says. ‘Feel bad enough already leavin’ ‘em alone for more’n five minutes, keep havin’ to remind myself that Julie ain’t just a little kid. Will as well. That shit don’t just go away.’

‘How’s she doin’?’

‘Stuck to Will like glue. He gets tired fast, but most of the time he sits with Julie goin’ through some of his old grade books. Was thinkin’ of askin’ Ms. Reardon — Amelia — to help put together some kind of teachin’ material.’

Roland considers this. ‘That’s not a bad idea. Amelia’d have her ready for school in no time.’

‘She don’t talk much, ‘cept to that boy Mike. The TV set’s a big hit…don’t think she’d ever seen one before.’ Tom hoists Roland’s bag onto his shoulder and shakes his head, curls coming loose from behind his ears as he talks. ‘It’s like she’s old and real young at once. I can’t figure it out.’

‘And Will?’

‘Quieter — and he was quiet to begin with. He’s real good with Julie though, don’t complain or ask where the fuck she came from, lets her sleep in the same room and all. They’re both havin’ nightmares…except when Julie has ‘em the whole house shakes. Broke the bedroom door clean off its hinges.’

‘Christ.’

‘Yeah. She’s packs a lot of heat.’

Roland cocks his head, thinks about Tom shaking like a dog at the foot of his bed. ‘What about you? Gettin’ any sleep?’

Tom snorts: _what_ _a stupid question_. ‘Are you?’

‘I ain’t sharin’ my meds, so you know.’

‘Ain’t askin’ you to,’ Tom says, and stops walking. Something breaking cleanly in his voice as he chokes out his next words. ‘Think I better dial it back on that kinda thing, the drinkin’ and all. I can’t fuck this one up, Roland, not this time. I just can’t.’

It’s easy to reach out and take Tom by the elbow. The admission tears another strip off his toughened hide, Roland can see that, but it doesn’t seem as painful. That ugly part’s been exposed since the beginning; it’s idea of losing that familiarity that has Tom folded in on himself with worry. There’s comfort in it. 

‘You got this,’ Roland murmurs. ‘And it won’t be you goin’ at it alone. Can’t be too late to teach some old dogs a new trick or two.’

Tom squints up at the clouds and blinks back the wetness welling in his eyes. ‘Fuck, we’re goin’ to be a miserable pair, ain’t we?’

Roland shrugs, looks at the distant outline of Tom’s Chevy where the pale shapes of the kids’ faces are barely visible in the rear window; aware that something is expanding in his chest, as far from misery as he’s ever felt. 

‘Come on,’ he says, and slaps his hands down on his knees. ‘You know, somehow I ain’t been introduced to that boy of yours? Closure, man. About time.’

***

Tom takes winding country roads the whole way back home. The kids sit in the back, Julie looking like a boy in her brother’s old clothes and just as rangy, taking in the countryside with silent contemplation while Will scribbles into his notebook. It’s not so bad: Roland’s spent his days filling in stiff silences with bad jokes and self-deprecating lines just to save himself from the suffocation of other people’s sympathy, but the Purcell kids don’t say much. It should be awkward but it’s not. 

They’ve all come out on the other side of some kind of hell; alive, if not in one piece, without words to capture the feeling. 

Roland yawns until his jaw pops. Thinks how odd it is, riding around with the missing boy as if his absence wasn’t the thing that drove them all together. Finds his eyes growing heavier with each passing field, cropped furrows of fallow farmland and stripped trees shining with wet that blurs into one tired landscape as Tom turns on the wipers. 

The absence of the lulling motor wakes him up. He cracks an eye open to find dark sky and the car parked in the driveway of a neat clapboard house with light spilling from the illuminated windows onto the whitewashed wooden siding. He’s alone. 

‘Fuck me,’ grunts Roland. 

Half-considers blaring the horn to get Tom to help him inside but, then again, he’s not so fucking helpless and the neighbours might take it to heart — so he spends a good few minutes grappling out of the car and onto the hospital crutches instead, swaying one-legged like the Steadfast fucking Tin Soldier. It’s pathetic how long the driveway seems. Only about fifteen feet from the car to the door but he’s sweating by the time he gets there. 

A smell of cooking meets him the the hallway. He follows it and finds Tom in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up and hair wild from the steam, standing at the humming gas cooker with Julie intent at his elbow.

It’s a more domestic scene than Roland imagined. The idea that he’s some how part of it clenches the pit of his stomach, equal parts fear and hope. Along with another smaller part that wants to wrap his arms around Tom from behind and bury his face his neck. 

‘You left me in the fuckin’ car?’ he says by way of announcing his presence.

Tom wipes his hands on his shirt and shrugs.

‘Ain’t like I wasn’t goin’ to get you,’ he says mildly. ‘Wound the window down and all.’

‘Yeah, I’ve got fuckin’ frostbite.’

‘Think they’ll have to amputate?’ Tom asks flatly. 

Will looks up from the table and stares at his father, horrified. It’s this just as much as the dryness of Tom’s reply that has Roland snorting with laughter, while the kid looks between them in utter confusion as if he's never seen Tom make someone laugh before. He blinks. It strikes Roland then how miserable Thanksgiving in the Purcell household must have been, with Tom and Lucy and Will stuck between them as unwilling umpire, no humour to be found whatsoever.

Roland sits himself heavily at the table opposite Will, peering down at the crayon filled notebook in the boy’s hands. ‘You know, I ain’t never seen him as good-natured. You draw much normally?’ 

‘Yessir,’ Will says. He looks at Roland like he’s not sure what to make of him. Roland wonders what Tom told the kid, if anything. How much he suspects. Especially if Tom’s not the type to have many friends.

‘Cool. I can barely draw myself a map outta my house let alone make anything resemblin’ art.’ Roland fumbles in his pocket and pulls out his penknife and a wedge of basswood; his companions for the last week in hospital. ‘Though I used to make these back in the day. Got out of the habit of it. That one’s a bear, see?’

He hands the wooden carving to Will. The kid nods, carefully runs a finger over the rough ears and snout.

‘Used to be a lot better at ‘em,’ Roland says. ‘You can keep that one if you like, he’s pretty much done. Can’t say much for the craftsmanship but I like to think he’s got character.’

Will stills. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, kid, he’s already yours. Now, Miss Julie, let’s see who else I got…’ He overplays it, digs around in his coat until Julie abandons her post at Tom’s side and comes to stand at the table with tentative curiosity. ‘Aha. There we go.’

He pulls out a carved horse and plants it in her palm, product of three days in bed and a few nicks to his hands before he re-learned the trick of it. Julie holds it up to the light, solemn as if he’s handed her the keys to the city. 

‘Hey, what’d y’all say?’ Tom says, back to them and bent over the counter. 

‘None of that,’ grunts Roland. ‘I oughta be thankin’ you two for agreein’ to let me into your house. Your dad’s been very good to me.’

‘Get your hands outta the way,’ Tom says gruffly as he plonks a plateful of turkey down in front of him. ‘Food’s ready. Kids, go wash up.’

Will and Julie make for the bathroom. Roland leans back, watches Tom carry over the vegetables and gravy, grins at his untucked shirt and harried manner. ‘Always held that a man ought to be able to cook,’ he comments. ‘If he don’t want to be lookin’ for his mother the rest of his life, that is.’ 

‘Not like you ain’t gonna be pullin’ your weight. Save us all from this,’ grimaces Tom, frowning down at the over-roasted potatoes. 

Roland catches Tom’s wrist and presses his lips to his pulse, dry and chaste. 

‘Looks real good,’ he murmurs. ‘Why don’t you sit your ass down and enjoy it?’

The tap in the bathroom is still running. He feels Tom’s hand settle on his head, the brief drag of fingers through his hair. Roland closes his eyes. Hears the creak of wood as Tom sits on the chair to his right and sighs. 

It’s an easy sort of quiet. Broken by the clatter of the children’s feet as they take up their places at the table, stifling their laughter at some private joke. 

‘I thought,’ says Tom with an awkward bob to his throat, ‘that maybe we oughta say thanks before we eat. Seems appropriate.’ 

He puts his hand out and Roland pauses, takes it in his own. Julie follows Will’s lead and reaches out to Roland’s other hand to complete the circle; Roland pretends to close his eyes, tries not to think of Norman Rockwell paintings or Will's fucking confirmation photo as he glances around at the Purcells: Will serious and quiet, Tom with his forehead knit in concentration, Julie, eyes open, watching with this strange ritual with interest. Roland shoots her a wink.

‘God, thank you for my family,’ Tom begins, ‘Thank you for returnin’ Will to us, and for bringin’ Julie into our lives. For keepin’ ‘em both safe. Thank you for those you see fit to bring into our lives in times of need.’

Roland squeezes Tom’s hand tight, knocking knees under the table. Tom falters. Clears his throat. 

‘Lord, protect us in the days to come,’ he rasps. ‘In your name we pray. Amen.’ 

There’s a moment where they’re just four damaged people at a table holding hands. Roland feels the blood-heat of Tom’s palm, solid and present, the small clench of Julie’s thin fingers laced over his own. It feels like home. Something to hold onto in the coming days and weeks of uncertainty and pain and change. 

Tom drags his thumb over Roland’s knuckles. Opens his eyes and looks right at him, sending a stab of gratefulness and want straight through Roland’s gut. 

They get to have this, after everything. 

‘Amen,’ says Roland. For the first time in twenty years he thinks maybe he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is niche, so comments appreciated!


End file.
